Priyanka Chopra on Bringing ‘Mama Bear' Instincts to 'The Bluff’ (Exclusive)

Priyanka Chopra and Karl Urban are dishing on their new swashbuckler action-thriller “The Bluff.”

“Extra’s” Terri Seymour spoke with Priyanka and Karl about the movie, which centers on a Caribbean woman who has her past exposed by buccaneers invading her island.

Priyanka opened up about her stunt work and the training that went into learning sword fighting.

“I mean, that's the gig, isn't it?” Priyanka noted. “As actors, that's what we want to do is for the performance never to have the weight of the work that went behind it. And I've never worked with swords. I've used knives and stuff before, but that's not been my expertise. So, you know, learning sword work was a lot of work, but also so much fun 'cause I knew that I had to I was challenged with someone who knew this really well. And I mean, he was born to play a pirate. So, I kind of had to really work myself up to get to that point. And I'm glad it resonated with you.”

When asked about the complexity of the training, Chopra commented, “I mean, you do the best you can. I was filming 'Heads of State' till two weeks before I started filming this movie. So, in-between shots or scenes, I would be, like, playing with swords and trying to figure out the ambidexterity of it. Like, that was really hard for my brain… When we met and we started work on this movie, we worked for, like, weeks.”

Karl enjoyed filming the movie with Priyanka.

Urban said, “You get the opportunity to play a swashbuckling pirate and, you know, just have fun... It was a huge challenge. I'm just grateful to have such a wonderful scene partner in Priyanka, and it's brutal. This is a pirate movie unlike anything you've ever seen. It is hardcore. It is gritty. It's action-packed. And  beyond all that, it's a great story when you actually come to understand really underneath the layers of what's there, and it's this love story between these two and the sort of tragedy within that… So much fun.”

Priyanka’s character is a mom, something that she could connect with personally since she has a daughter with husband Nick Jonas.

Chopra commented, “It was one of the big reasons I resonated with the movie, actually.”  

She went on, “My mom always said that to me, ‘When you become a mother, you'll realize how it feels when, you know, someone hurts your child,' because my mom was really a ferocious mama bear as well and... so were my grandmothers. I grew up seeing that. When I first read the script, our daughter was just 2 years old and she had just come out of a lot, so I really, viscerally felt that feeling of what was I capable of to keep her protected, how far could I go, and I just locked into that with this feeling and it was awesome. It’s such a universal feeling as a parent. Everyone understands that.”

Priyanka’s daughter Malti was on set, too! She shared, “We shot in Australia. We rebuilt all the sets… Malti was on set with me and she was in the house and on the beach and she had the best time.”

Terri also showed some sword work that she learned ahead of the interview. Karl noted, “Imagine doing that but then wearing, like, a full leather armor or big sort of 19th century wardrobe and then going 100% and trying not to hurt your partner.”

Priyanka also talked about her costumes and wearing a version to the premiere. She said, "Antoinette Messam, who's our very talented costume designer, you know, brought it up and showed me what it would look like, and I wore it for the first time. It was molded to my body. It was worked on for, you know, three months by incredible Australian artists who made it by hand and sculpted six of them because we needed so many.  I was like, 'I have to figure out a way of wearing this for the premiere, because I really wanted to honor the work that went behind making this movie.’ You know, there's a lot of ways filmmaking has gotten easier with technology coming in, but I think we, frankly, really wanted a lot of that old-school type of filming and, you know, real practical sets and actual guns and weapons and swords that came from the 19th century. So, I it was really to me this is one of the best experiences I've had in my career. And, you know, it was I wanted to honor it.”

Could this movie be his unofficial audition to jump into the “Pirates of the Caribbean” world?