Priyanka Chopra won Miss World in the year 2000 but just one year before that, Yukta Mookhey had been the winner of Miss World. This was a rare opportunity for India to win the title for the second consecutive year and in a recent interview, when Yukta was asked about Priyanka, the former actor said that Priyanka sought her advice when she was preparing for the international pageant. When asked if there was any trait about PC that she appreciated, Yukta blunty said, “Nothing.”
Yukta was in conversation with the YouTube channel Filmymantra Media, when she was asked the aforementioned question and as the interviewer expressed her shock at Yukta’s “nothing”, she reiterated, “No (smiles). Because she is junior to me. She was the one taking advice from me. Because she was in the following year after me.” She added, “I personally feel that there were things that I guided her for, and her parents were sort of wanting to talk to my parents. I don’t think she is the right person for you to ask me at this moment.”
But immediately afterwards, Yukta spoke about Juhi Chawla, who won Miss India in 1984 and represented India at the international pageant, and said that Juhi was extremely kind to her and did not see her as a competition or threat. “I remember Juhi Chawla spoke to me after I won and came back and she spoke to me very kindly. She said you are so beautiful and so tall, you carry yourself so well, think about going international,” she recalled and added, “So those are the kind of people I am talking about, who don’t look at you as competition. They don’t look at you as a threat. They look at you as someone who is a junior, or like ‘I might be able to teach them something’, and that requires a lot of greatness.”
In the same chat, Yukta also spoke about meeting Sushmita Sen, Aishwarya Rai and Diana Hayden, who had won the international pageant before her. “I remember Sushmita cheering me on a lot. She said, ‘I am so proud of you, you represented India so well’, she gave me her best wishes. Aishwarya also, very dignified, very graceful, very classy. The way she talks, you listen to that and you know that this is the standard that we have to follow,” she said.
She then spoke about how Diana’s mentorship helped her at Miss World. Diana won Miss World in 1997. Yukta said, “Diana Hayden motivated me so much. Before the competition, I would talk to her very often over the phone. Like she would give me tips on how I should handle certain things, or what kind of questions I should not answer. Or just be careful when you are speaking in Hindi because someone else must not feel that you are speaking ill about them. She prepared me for all those little things. I felt so comforted, and so held, like how we say ‘badi didi hai voh (like an elder sister)’. She gave that to me.”
Yukta had a short career in Hindi movies and she moved to pursuing her philanthropic activities.
