Citadel stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden on their ‘intimate drama’

“Very juicy” – that’s the only way Priyanka Chopra Jonas can sum up teaming up with Scottish TV hunk Richard Madden to shoot Amazon’s new blockbuster sofa offering, Citadel.

Fans will see the former Bollywood siren – married to toyboy pop heartthrob Nick Jonas in real life – and the 36-year-old Bodyguard beefcake get up close as they play elite agents from a fictional fallen global spy agency Citadel. The spies must thwart the efforts of a powerful manipulating syndicate called Manticore.

For the 40-year-old Indian beauty her favourite thing about playing agent Nadia Sinh was the baggage she came with.

“Nadia carries a lot of baggage,” Chopra Jonas says.

“She has to navigate really thick waters, you know? She has to hold her head up high while her character’s changing, her life is changing all around her, but she has to stay centred because of the burdens that she carries.”

The siren adds: “I think that makes her very juicy as a character for me to play because every choice that is made by her is burdened and laden by so much pressure. And she thrives in it, so it was really wonderful.”

Meanwhile, Madden plays alongside as agent Mason Kane, a highly skilled tier-one agent on a mission after the fall of Citadel at the hands of menacing Manticore.

Things got deadly for the pair as they fired guns and wielded swords but they made sure they were on hand to help each other out on set.

‘If I was uncomfortable with some camera angles, I’d tell him, ‘Put your hand there and cover me’,” Chopra Jonas said. “And he would tell me, ‘You put your hand here’.”

For his part Madden describes teaming up on screen as “intimate drama”.

“I think often at times, we see shows that are 80 per cent drama, 20 per cent action, or vice versa,” Madden says.

“And this show aimed to be 100 per cent of both. And I think that’s what we’ve managed to pull off, ‘cause in the middle of these huge sequences with explosions and cars blowing up and all of that, I don’t want to spoil it for you, we have this really kind of intimate drama between these two characters and how they dance together.”

“So, for me, that’s what was so exciting about these huge action pieces, was that they were infused with heart and drama, and storytelling,” he continues.

“We get to see a lot about these characters and how they physically interact. Not just great action sequences, but there’s drama at the heart of each one of them.”

And there wasn’t just sparks flying but bullets too as it was a pretty risky assignment given Madden’s experience with a hair-raising fight scene aboard a train. But Madden says he and Chopra Jonas gelled “beautifully together” in the heat of the action.

“It was a complicated process getting ready to actually shoot this train sequence because we have all of the confines of being in a small train space,” he regales.

“And we worked really closely with this amazing stunt team to work out what are our strengths and, be it speed or agility, or brute force, how we can incorporate them into this space.”

He says there is quite an art to wielding a weapon. “We managed to get into the studio before we started filming and started learning a language of footwork, of gunplay. How do we incorporate all of these things there? Okay, we’ve got a shotgun, but how can we use it as a sword? How can I use it as a battering ram? How can I load it and throw it so the other actor can fire it? So they were really plugged into the heart of what Nadia and Mason are, which is two people that can work beautifully together to make one super weapon.”

Citadel launches on Prime Video exclusively on Friday.