Priyanka Chopra Recalls Being in a "Tumultuous" Relationship When Nick Jonas Slid Into Her DMs in 2016

Priyanka Chopra wasn't in the best romance before she called Nick Jonas her lovebug.

The actress took a trip down memory lane to recall how she and Nick first connected back in 2016—a year after his breakup from Olivia Culpo and during a time when Priyanka was in a complicated relationship with someone else.

"He slid into my DMs on Twitter," Priyanka said of Nick during the March 27 episode of the Armchair Expert podcast. "I was in a tumultuous relationship at that time. We had common friends who didn't want me to be in my relationship and were like, ‘Oh, he's single too. He's really not with that girl but he is.' It was complicated on both our ends."

Looking back on the habits in her love life before Nick, Priyanka shared that some of her exes were "a little bit narcissistic." 

"I kept making the same mistakes," Priyanka said. "A lot of the pattern in my relationships was me feeling gaslit, because I gave that kind of power to the people that I was with, where I was like, ‘You come first.'"

It's unclear who Priyanka was dating at the time. Although she sparked romance rumors with Tom Hiddleston at the 2016 Emmys, she later told Andy Cohen that she only "met him for 15 minutes" and "he was adjusting my dress."

Priyanka, who added in her latest interview that her exes have been a mix of "bad, good, ugly," noted that she looked both inward and outward before she and Nick officially got together in 2018.

"The last [relationship]—and the year and a half that I took before I met my husband—officially gave me so much clarity on what I needed," she added. "Not what I wanted."

As for what went down in between that first DM and their eventual wedding in 2018? Priyanka admitted that she had reservations about getting involved with Nick at first.

"When Nick texted me in like [2016] and slid into my DMs and we started chatting, I was at the end of my last long relationship before Nick. So, I didn't want to engage as much at that time," she noted. "I was also like 35. Nick was 25. I really put a stop on it in a way because I judged the book by the cover. I was like, ‘I wanna settle down. I've been there. I've done the fun dating thing.'"

After keeping in touch here and there over the next two years, and hanging out together at the 2017 Met Gala, Priyanka and Nick began dating in 2018. That same year, the pair wed in her native India before welcoming their daughter Malti in 2022.

Looking back on her initial hesitation, Priyanka made it clear that her fears about him being younger were unfounded, being her husband is "actually a 70-year-old man stuck in a 30-year-old's body."