But while she is a megastar in the rest of the world, until relatively recently, Chopra has had a low profile in the U.S. I remember the first time I saw her: in the red carpet photos from the 2016 SAG Awards, in a long tulle dress with hot-pink lace overlays. She was all anyone could talk about for a few days after that.

Confession: When I first saw those images, I immediately wondered if anyone that good looking could also be equally interesting. I regret this thought. But as Chopra puts it: “Women pull each other down all the time. That’s our weakness. The boys come together — like bromance. Why can’t girls do it, too?”

When she scored her first offer to star in her own series, Chopra declined. “I said no, because it’s a really long commitment.” She was in the middle of a bunch of movies in India, and couldn’t imagine taking on anything more. But after she read the Quantico script, she reconsidered. The catch? Alex Parrish — the lead role, and the one Chopra was gunning for — had been written for an American actress. “I’m not even Indian-American,” Chopra says. “I’m from another country. I speak Indian. I think Indian. I look Indian. I really had to wrap my head around who Alex was, to convince not just the writers, but the American people that I’m an American girl.” She wound up nabbing the part and making headlines for being a South Asian woman headlining a network thriller.

But while she’s more than happy to be associated with breaking barriers, she’s sensitive to the language surrounding such achievements. When I ask her about what it might mean if she became the first woman to play James Bond — in an interview earlier this year, Chopra said she’d be keen to take on the role — she set the record straight.

“I know everything is about diversity right now. But I think it should be about humanity. It’s 2016. It’s so easy to separate ourselves and become smaller and smaller pieces of humanity,” she says. “I don’t like the phrase 'woman of colour.' I feel like that puts women in a box. I’m a woman, whether I’m white, Black, brown, green, blue, or pink — whatever. I think we need to start looking beyond that. It would be a big win for women, period.”