It could have been any celebrity wedding: a former boyband star and an actor married in a lavish ceremony. There was a dedicated hashtag on Instagram. People Magazine scored the exclusive pictures.

But this was India’s Rajasthan state, the bride was Priyanka Chopra, and during the five-day ceremony the groom, Nick Jonas, draped her in a mangalsutra – a traditional Hindu necklace she will wear until her husband’s death.

The publicity blitz around “Nickyanka’s” nuptials has confirmed Chopra, 36, as the most successful Indian ever to make the leap from Bollywood star to American celebrity.

In trying to crack the American market, Chopra followed in the footsteps of another former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai. Several male actors including Irrfan Khan and Anil Kapoor have also carved out American profiles, while last year, Deepika Padukone made her Hollywood debut alongside Vin Diesel in xXx: Return of Xander Cage.

But Chopra has been a trailblazer, film industry writers say. “This is the first time an Indian has been cast not as an ‘Indian’,” says Subhash Jha, a veteran Indian film critic and journalist. “Nowhere has Priyanka been made to speak in a sing-song voice, or with an accent, or even to play an Indian character.”

When Chopra was cast as a lead in the TV action drama Quantico in 2015, she was the first South Asian to win such a role. Though her American film credits have been relatively modest, her celebrity has skyrocketed: this year she was the first Indian to appear on the cover of Variety magazine, will next month become the first to front the US edition of Vogue, and has been named as one of the most influential people in the world by Time and Forbes.

Chopra’s fame has been the product of relentless work but also keen self-awareness, especially to avoid being pigeonholed by American producers, says Raja Sen, an Indian film critic.

“She has been able to embrace this all-American girl persona,” he says. “When all these [other Indian] actresses did their thing on the TV talk show circuit, Aishwarya Rai draped a sari around Oprah, and Deepika did the lungi dance with James Corden. But Priyanka was eating chicken wings with Jimmy Fallon.”

It has helped that Chopra is fluent in American culture: she spent three years as a teenager studying in different schools on the country’s east coast. After shifting her career stateside, one of her first TV appearances was as a singer during the opening theme of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football broadcast.

“She didn’t portray herself as this unattainable woman from a mysterious country,” says Sen. “She tried to straddle both cultures which I think none of the other Indian actors could do. They were always presented as these ethereal, beautiful women from the east who were fetishised for their Indian-ness.”

In contrast, the Indian background of Chopra’s character in the now-cancelled Quantico, Alex Parrish, is largely incidental to the wider plot. “When has one ever seen before an Indian character that doesn’t announce his or her Indian-ness on screen?” Masand says.

Basing herself in the US has also been crucial, something few others have been willing to do, fearing the impact it could have on their careers in India. With hard work, Chopra has managed to keep both plates spinning.

“I remember meeting her on a flight when she was doing a weekend trip to India,” says Rajeev Masand, a film writer. “She flew to India for 24 hours to finish a role here and flew right back for when she was required at Quantico on Monday morning.

“She was willing to do what it took,” he adds. “Whether it was appearing on all the talk shows, playing to the tabloids and the paparazzi, or acquiring an American accent.”

She has understood the power of perception, says Shubra Gupta, a film journalist and critic with the Indian Express newspaper, who has watched Chopra became a fixture of the global celebrity circuit.

“She moves in the circle where she gets to be invited to things like the royal wedding, she goes to Cannes, she’s at the Met Gala ball and red carpets – these are all optics that make people sit up and take notice,” Gupta says.

Yet she has shown enough humility to understand that moving to the US – at the peak of her celebrity in India – meant returning to square one. “In Bollywood, most actors who are big stars don’t feel the need to audition anymore,” she says. “Priyanka put her A-list actor ego aside and actually asked for those roles, she auditioned and did the heavy lifting.”

Achieving film success in India is just as challenging as in Hollywood, and on sheer scale of numbers, probably harder. Beauty pageants have frequently provided a shortcut for young women to careers in cinema. But even among this cohort, Chopra – the winner of the 2000 Miss World pageant – has stood out, says Sen.

“Priyanka came along and started doing really feisty roles,” he says. “She was not going to be just another pretty girl, who could be anyone. She wasn’t always pulling it off – but she was bringing something to the table.”

One of her breakout roles was in 2004’s Aitraaz, where she played an business executive who falsely accuses an employee of sexual harassment. In What’s Your Raashee (2009), she played every sign in the zodiac, thought to be the first time an actor has played 12 roles in a single film.

In the US, too, she has shown a willingness to take risks. In 2017’s Baywatch, a film remake of the 90s series, Chopra starred as the film’s chief antagonist: a Colombian businesswoman who controls the drugs trade on the beach. “It was a horrifically bad film,” says Jha.

“It’s not a good movie at all,” agrees Sen. “But even then, she didn’t play one of the girls. She’s the villain. She gets more visibility that the seven women in the red swimsuits by not being one of them.”

Chopra’s timing has also been impeccable, coming as Hollywood grapples with the need to reflect an American population that will become majority non-white within three decades.

“Diversity is the key word in American currently, and it wasn’t 10 years ago when Aishwarya was trying to break out,” says Masand. “She benefits from that being such an important conversation right now.”

Indians rallied around Chopra this week after The Cut, New York Magazine’s female-focused culture website, published an article calling the actor a “global scam artist” who had fooled Jonas into marrying her as a public relations coup.

Readers bristled not just at the sexism and racism they saw in the piece, but also the suggestion their home-town star needed to seek Jonas out for publicity. In India, there is little doubt over whose star received a bigger boost. “He’s the lucky one,” Gupta says.