Now that Priyanka Chopra has married husband Nick Jonas for the trillionth time (a rough estimate) and returned from her lavish tropical honeymoon, she has some downtime to prepare for her next big role: playing former cult spokesperson and attempted murderer Ma Anand Sheela. While sitting down with Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday, the Quantico alum revealed that she's indeed signed on to play the real-life cult figure, whose name was abuzz last year when Netflix's Wild Wild Country docuseries reintroduced her infamous legacy to a whole new generation.
Sheela was the right-hand woman of self-pronounced Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, aka Osho, who was the leader of the Rajneeshees, a sex-positive cult in rural Oregon in the early 1980s. The stateside arrival of the Rajneeshees rocked the neighboring town of Antelope (population: 40), the state of Oregon, and eventually the entire country, with news coverage digging into the cult's criminal activity, poisonings, and more. "We are developing it as the character Sheela, who was this guru who originated from India," Chopra told DeGeneres of the role. "[She] was his right-hand woman, and she was just devious."