Priyanka Chopra champions a female James Bond

I was never a fan of the show, but I didn’t really feel like I needed to be to catch what few references I picked up on, like the slow-mo jokes or references to episode plots from the show, which are pretty much spelled out in the film for the uninitiated. “So that was the end of that”. There’s eager Summer Quinn (Alexandra Daddario), the nerdy but also eager Ronnie Greenbaum (Jon Bass), and then there’s disgraced Olympic swimmer Matt Brody (Efron), who’s doing it as part of his probation.

The Rock tells us it’s an uphill battle when you start recreating something that people love. We took that idea and turned it into a raunchy action comedy.

Chopra balanced a grueling shooting schedule, splitting time between Baywatch’s Florida and Georgia location shoots and Quantico’s NY set. “It’s more than just boobs bouncing around on a beach”.

While catching up with the cast of Baywatch at a NY screening last night, we wanted to know, can Johnson count on their votes?

Indeed, Chopra and her female castmates all seemed to be having fun with serious fashion: Kelly Rohrbach chose a Prabal Gurung suit and Ilfenesh Hadera wore a menswear-inspired Mugler blazer as a makeshift dress. Certain cameos are spoiled in the opening credits (and they are just cameos, so don’t get your hopes up) but other jokes about the sheer ridiculousness of this property land better than a lot of other gags. “But Zac and I are very good friends”.

And Alexandra admits she didn’t like dieting for her role in the movie.

Truly one of the nicest guys I know.

No such slap-and-tickle for Stephanie. There’s a reason Chopra is a massive global star, and she joins Johnson as one of the most charismatic people on screen. It showed me as I was bullied how to stand up for myself. But in this movie, I’ve seen, especially with all the girls, the kind of determination and work that it took to be in those bodies, and the kind of focus they had. “I always want to do things that are different”, she said.

“I stood up to my bully and that made me stronger, to have to deal with that”.

For Chopra, her fun is found in nights out singing Britney Spears karaoke.

“No, grateful”, she asserts, laughing. “Some days-like, most days-you knew you had bathing suit scenes coming up, but you were too exhausted to go to the gym, or you had a craving for something that you know you shouldn’t eat”. “He’s very honest, he’s very genuine and he really cares about people”.