On Thursday, Priyanka Chopra shared a rare photo of her baby Malti Marie’s face in a photo of the one-year-old receiving blessings at Siddhivinayak Temple in Mumbai. The girl was wearing a small circlet over her baby hair, and wearing a onesie with white embroidery. Chopra was draped in a red shawl over a long transparent piece of blue embroidered fabric, holding Malti in her arms next to an altar covered in flowers.
“MM’s first trip to India had to be completed with Shree Siddhivinayak’s blessings,” Chopra wrote in the captioning, hashtagging the images #HanumanJayanti #GanpatiBappaMorya.
The actress shares Malti with her husband Nick Jonas, who joined her at the opening of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai this week, where she wore a stunning ensemble by Amit Aggarwal.
While in India, she’s also been doing a press tour for her Amazon Prime series, Citadel, along with co-star Richard Madden.
The star recently told Dax Shepard on his Armchair Expert podcast how she got to the decision to have children in her later 30s when she had a younger husband. They welcomed Malti via surrogate in 2022.
“I always knew I wanted kids, which was one of the big reasons I didn’t want to date Nick at that time ’cause I was like, ‘I don’t know if he wants kids at 25,” at that time,” she explained. “But I’ve always wanted kids. I love kids.”
She then discussed how she decided to freeze her eggs in her early thirties, which she felt freed up time for her career.
“I could continue on an ambitious warpath that I wanted to achieve,” she said. “I wanted to get to a certain place in my career. I also hadn’t met the person I wanted to have children with or I didn’t see that. That’s anxiety-inducing. I was 35, and my mom’s an OBGYN who’s like, ‘Just do it.’”
Chopra added, “I tell everyone to [freeze their eggs]. My mom had said [to do it as many times as you need] to me, and I did do it for myself as well.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.