Priyanka Chopra says she froze her eggs in her early 30s so she could 'continue on an ambitious warpath' in her career

• Priyanka Chopra said that she "felt such a freedom" when she froze her eggs in her early 30s.
• She said that she was able to "continue on an ambitious warpath that I wanted to achieve."

Priyanka Chopra Jonas opened up about the "freedom" she felt when she chose to freeze her eggs in her early 30s so she could continue working toward her career goals.

"I tell all my younger friends, the biological clock is real," Chopra Jonas, 40, said on an episode of the podcast "Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard," released on Monday.

"It gets so much harder to get pregnant after 35 and to carry to term, especially with women that have been working all their lives," she continued. "But science is at such an amazing place right now."

Egg freezing, an in-clinic procedure in which a person's eggs are retrieved from their ovaries and preserved for future use, has become an increasingly popular method for women.

A woman's fertility begins to rapidly decline when she is 35 and a round of egg freezing costs on average between $6,000 and $10,000, Dr. Jane Frederick, a board-certified fertility expert in California, previously told Insider.

For Chopra Jonas, who appeared in dozens of Bollywood films before making the jump to Hollywood with a starring role on the ABC drama series "Quantico," freezing her eggs allowed her to continue working while minimizing the pressure of her biological clock.

"I felt such a freedom," she said. "I did it in my early 30s. I could continue on an ambitious warpath that I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get to a certain place in my career. And I also hadn't met the person I wanted to have children with or I didn't see that. That's anxiety-inducing."

She said she was "35, and my mom's an OB-GYN, who's like, '36 — Just do it.'"

Chopra Jonas said she encourages "everyone" to freeze their eggs, especially if they can afford to save up money for the procedure.

"It's the best gift you'll give yourself because you're taking the power from your biological clock, and you can work until however long you want," she said. "Your eggs will still be the same age as when you froze them, for people who want kids."

During the interview, the "Citadel" star also said that she "always knew" that she wanted kids, which is why she was hesitant about being in a relationship with Nick Jonas, who's 10 years younger than her and was 25 when they started dating in 2018.

Chopra Jonas married Jonas months after they got engaged and the couple's first child, a daughter named Malti Marie, was born via surrogate in January 2022.

In honor of Mother's Day that year, Jonas opened up about the "rollercoaster" experience of parenthood in an Instagram post and revealed that their baby spent more than 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) before being released to their home.

In her cover story for the February 2023 issue of British Vogue, Chopra Jonas said that she "had medical complications" and surrogacy "was a necessary step."