Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas welcomed baby Malti Marie Chopra Jonas last year via surrogate. Priyanka and Nick faced utmost difficulties right after Malti was born as she was in the NICU.

Priyanka recently featured on the 2023 cover of British Vogue’s February issue and the “Baywatch” actress spoke about how everyone’s a critic these days and how she was criticized for opting for surrogacy.

READ MORE: Priyanka Chopra, Nick Jonas Celebrated Daughter Malti Marie’s First Birthday ‘In Style’

“I’ve developed a tough hide when people talk about me. But it’s so painful when they talk about my daughter. I’m like, ‘Keep her out of it.’ I know what it felt like to hold her little hands when they were trying to find her veins. So no, she’s not going to be gossip I’ve been really protective of this chapter of my life with my daughter. Because it’s not about my life only. It’s hers too.”

Priyanka further explained why she had to opt for surrogacy and it was an important step.

“I had medical complications… This was a necessary step, and I’m so grateful I was in a position where I could do this. Our surrogate was so generous, kind, lovely and funny and she took care of this precious gift for us for six months.”

 

However, Chopra Jonas’ tone takes on a bite for the internet haters who kept theorizing why the couple had a surrogate.

“You don’t know me,” she says. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. And just because I don’t want to make my medical history, or my daughter’s, public doesn’t give you the right to make up whatever the reasons were.”

 

Priyanka also talked about Malti’s premature birth and said that she and Jonas “spent every single day with her on my chest, on my husband’s chest… I didn’t know if she would make it or not.”

Recalling her first meeting with her newborn daughter, Chopra says: “I was in the OR [operating room] when she came out. She was so small, smaller than my hand. I saw what the intensive-care nurses do. They do God’s work. Nick and I were both standing there as they intubated her. I don’t know how they even found what they needed [in her tiny body] to intubate her.”

Chopra and Jonas are raising their daughter in the US with the guidance of their family. Recounting the time when Malti was introduced to solid food, Chopra said, “The first time she had a solid morsel she gagged and I thought I’d killed her.”

She describes the support of her mother Madhu Chopra and her in-laws Denise and Kevin Jonas Sr as ‘balm’. She says “They talk me through a lot of this. Like, ‘They’re gonna gag. It’s normal.’ But because I’m a NICU mommy, the stakes are so high.”

Chopra is awaiting the release of “Love Again” and is currently working on the Russo brothers-created series “Citadel”.