Priya Mangal (2024)

This article is about the character from Turning Red. For the character from Mira, Royal Detective, see Priya.

Priya Mangal is a main character in Disney•Pixar's 2022 animated feature film, Turning Red. She is one of Mei's best friends.

Background[]

Official Description[]

Priya is meticulous yet artsy, passionate yet stoic. She’s a quiet wild card with a deadpan sense of humor and a calm and collected approach to school, friendship, and just about anything except 4*Town. Even Priya can’t contain her love of 4*Town.^[1]

Personality[]

Priya is presented to be the most chill and mellow of the four girls while also being supportive of them and having their back. Despite being deadpan and stoic most of the time, she tends to act as excitable as the rest of her friends. Priya is interested in anything that's macabre. She is seen reading a vampire romance novel during her introduction scene and also asks Mei if she's a werewolf after seeing her red panda form. She often makes vampire-like poses like crossing her arms when she's lying down and she also said that she always wanted a tail. Priya's gothic interests are further displayed at Tyler's party when she acts out mortality for a charades game and when she utters the phrase "Thank Cthulhu," after Mei finally arrived at the party.

Physical appearance[]

Priya is an average height, Indian-Canadian 13-year-old girl with brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and curly, wavy dark brown hair that falls right past her shoulders; her bangs are parted and slightly curled. She wears navy glasses with black frames, along with shiny mini gold hoop earrings placed on her ear holes and a gold nose piercing as nose jewelry. Her clothing consists of a quarter stripy yellow shirt with a small zipper on the top of it, baggy ochre cargo pants that feature pockets and grey sneakers that have blue lacings. She also wears black nail polish, a grayish-yellow watch on her left arm and a rainbow friendship bracelet on the right arm.

Priya's gym clothes consist of a white t-shirt that has dark green lines on the collar and sleeves and a "Lester B. Peason phys ed" logo on the top right of her shirt. She wears green and white shorts.

During the 4★Town concert, Priya wears a yellow t-shirt that reads "4★Town" in blue and rainbow-colored with orange and blue stars and markers-made tattoo with hearts, stars and saying "Jesse", "4 Townie" and "4" on her cheeks, hands and t-shirt.

Appearances[]

Turning Red[]

Priya is first seen reading a nightfall book and greets Mei, as she and her friends all get together. Priya then runs into Mei and her friends again as she leaves for school. She and her friends stop Mei when she is talking and peek through the Daisy Mart window to see Devon, the store clerk. When Abby comments that her mother cut Devon's hair, Priya and Miriam ask if they can have some of Devon's hair. Mei, however, isn't fond of Devon and shows them that the ideal men are 4★Town, which Priya gets immersed in. When Miriam asked Mei to join them for karaoke, Priya gives her the puppy eyes along with Abby and Miriam; however, Mei refuses to go. After joining in singing "Nobody like U", Mei leaves too soon making the excuse that she has to do other stuff, while Priya along with Miriam and Abby agree that Mei is totally controlled by her mother.

A few days later, Priya and her friends notice that Mei isn't acting right. After hearing that she smells off, Priya offers her deodorant. Priya is unaware of the fact that Mei has a red panda form at the moment. A couple more days later, Priya and the others go to Mei's house asking if she is alright. Priya offers her some pads, but Abby tells her to forget that as she tells Mei that 4★Town is coming to Toronto, which leads Mei to expose her Panda form. Priya screams and then gets taken in as Mei tells everyone of her friends to calm down. Priya automatically asks her if she has become a werewolf, which Abby corrects as a red panda. Priya finds this super cool, and says that she always wanted a tail. Priya then gets a bit confused when Mei tells that this red panda form is some kind of "Inconvenient genetic thingy", and then comforts her when she breaks down in tears. Mei then tells all of them to go to the concert without her. Priya then hears Miriam and Abby beatboxing, and getting swept in the beat; does a back beat with "Yea" and "Let's go". They all then sing an acapella version of "Nobody like U". They then all hug as Mei turns back into a human. Priya then takes notice Mei's friends keep the panda form on low. She is then quickly shoved outside by Mei.

During dodgeball, Priya tells her friends that she could go when she is 30. She then notices Ming's presence, and then witnesses Mei using her power at Tyler and then takes her into the bathroom. She tells her that they are going to make it to the concert. She then has to think of a way of how they are going get money for the tickets themselves, She sees Abby hug Mei while she transforms, and then notices Stacy and her own group of friends come in. She hides Mei in the stall and then corrects one of Stacy's friends that she is a red panda along with Miriam, Abby and Mei. She then notices that Stacy and her friends love the panda, and then her along with her friends find the exact plan to get those dollars for the tickets. She participates in the plan of "Operation 4★Town Shakedown" and then works with her friends to gain lots of money. She then works with her friends on some red panda pendants and states that she's slowly getting carpal tunnel. She then notices that Tyler wants to spread the rumor and takes notice that he wants to have a party with Mei's panda form in it. She then goes to the party with Miriam and Abby.

Later on, Priya passes the time by doing charades, none of her friends guessed what it was until a goth girl answers "mortality" which was the correct answer. Mei then comes in the party...but in a cheaply made red panda outfit. She then talks with Mei and agrees with her other friends that if Mei doesn't go, she doesn't go. Mei then turns into a red panda and gets the party going. Priya has a fun time and dances with the goth girl at one moment and then chills on the roof with Miriam, Abby and Mei. She gets upset when Tyler was looking for Mei, but gets excited that her and her friends are going go to the concert soon...until hearing from the radio that 4★Town is coming on May 25th instead. Priya, along with her friends, try to calm Mei down when she transforms into a panda and is outright scared when she attacks Tyler. When Ming shows up to take her daughter away, she scolds her along with her friends and Priya is visibly upset when Mei doesn't stand up for them. After Mei and Ming leave Tyler's house, they all decide to go to the concert without Mei.

At the night of the concert, Priya is let down that Mei cannot go alongside them as they get tickets. Minutes later, Mei leaps into the concert. Miriam denies that she is a part of their group until Abby and Priya tell her that she took care of Robaire Jr. while Mei was away. They all then reunite and spot Tyler in the crowd, so they all become very excited for him and join him along the group. The concert then begins, as Priya does a corpse-like pose when Jesse comes onto the stage. The concert then gets destroyed by Ming, and Priya evades alongside her friends. She then helps Mei and her family with the ritual by joining in with singing "Nobody Like U". After a while, Abby, Priya, Miriam, and Tyler all meet Mei at the temple tour and they all go for karaoke.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

• Priya is one of the few Disney and Pixar characters to wear nose jewelry.
• Priya is implied to be bisexual. Aside from her shared crush on 4★Town, she is also seen dancing with a goth girl at Tyler's party while Mei, Miriam and Abby give a suggestive look. Animator Andrea Goh confirmed in a tweet that she is, in fact, queer.^[2]
  • She is the fourth LGBT character in Pixar films. The first was Specter from Onward, the second and third were Greg and Manuel from Out, and the fifth is Alisha Hawthorne from Lightyear.
• When introduced, Priya is seen as a fan of the Nightfall series, an homage to the Twilight series of rather controversial supernatural vampire novels written by Stephenie Meyer.
  • However, the first Twilight novel came out in 2005, three years after the setting date of Turning Red in 2002.
• Priya is represented by the color yellow. This was most likely intended to be ironic as yellow is a happy and joyous color while Priya is mostly deadpan. However, in Indian culture, yellow is seen as a sign of purity, chastity and sensuality, which are major themes in the movie.
• Despite her name being given as Priya Dewan on the "Nobody Like U" music video, the Pixar website states that her last name is actually Mangal.^[3]
• Her last name is derived from the Arabic-Turkish word manqal (منقل) meaning "portable" and originally referred to portable heaters used by Bedouin to warm tents during the cold desert evenings.

References[]

External links[]

• Priya on Turning Red Wiki

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