Blowing Hot and Cold

If you were closely following everything that Sonam Kapoor says about Deepika Padukone, it would be hard to decode the status of their on-off friendship. The two actresses who made their film bows on the same day back in 2007—Sonam debuted in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya, Deepika in Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om—have been constantly pitted against each other professionally. But when they ganged up on that episode of Koffee With Karan a few years ago to take jibes at Ranbir Kapoor, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were close buddies.

Most recently Sonam gave an interview in which she said: “Deepika is a colleague I respect a lot.” But this was right after she made that very biting comment when asked to weigh in on the ‘cleavage controversy’ that Deepika landed herself in a few months ago: “People will respect you only if you respect yourself.” Not to mention the sharp digs she took at DP on her last appearance on Koffee With Karan in which she was paired with her father Anil Kapoor. Explaining why DP was always in the news, Sonam famously said Deepika had a PR person who was evidently working overtime. She also commented that Deepika didn’t have her own sense of style, and that she merely allowed stylists and designers to create her every look.

When I met her earlier this week, Sonam clarified a few things, including the status of her friendship with Deepika: “We’re cordial to each other. We say ‘hello’ at parties. But that’s it.” She told me she’s friends with Anushka Sharma, Jacqueline Fernandez, Kangana Ranaut and Swara Bhaskar, but not with Deepika Padukone. “But contrary to what most people think, I’m not trying to constantly run her down. I get asked for my opinion each time there’s an issue involving her, and I speak my mind. I don’t go around offering my opinion on everything she does,” Sonam explained. “In fact, during the ‘cleavage controversy’, I defended her immediately. And I was commenting about how irresponsible mothers raise disrespectful sons, so women need to respect themselves by raising their sons better if they expect to get respect from men. I wasn’t taking being snide about Deepika at all,” she added.

On Leave for Work

Anushka Sharma is on a long break from the sets. She won’t slap on the greasepaint again until July when she begins filming Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil with Ranbir Kapoor, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be twiddling her thumbs at home until then. The PK star, who only just returned from a holiday in Australia where her cricketer boyfriend Virat Kohli was playing, has a few weeks off until she’s swamped with ‘promotions duty’ for her home production NH10, whose first trailer is expected to release in the first week of February.

With three back-to-back releases lined up—NH10 in March, Bombay Velvet in May, and Dil Dhadakne Do in June— Anushka’s been joking that she’s going to see the media more frequently than she sees her family, given all the press tours she’ll be expected to participate in. She also made an observation that she’s possibly the only actor who hasn’t yet been on the popular entertainment show Comedy Nights With Kapil, now a crucial stop on every film-promotional campaign. “NH10 and Bombay Velvet aren’t the kind of films that may take the traditional route for promotions, so I guess the earliest I may be on that show is while promoting Dil Dhadakne Do,” she told me. It’s a show she watches with great enthusiasm, however, she quickly added.

The Trials of a Former Model

One of the hottest female models in the 90s, this stunning looker vanished after her Bollywood career didn’t quite take off. It didn’t help that her rocky relationship with a married man—the brother of a C-level actor and sometime comic— ultimately went nowhere, even after a reported suicide attempt on her part. She was back in the news a few years ago, when she suffered a health scare, following which she has involved herself with charitable causes. Earlier this week, the now happily married former model was spotted attending a preview screening of a new Bollywood film. Things got uncomfortable, however, when she came face to face with her ex’s brother, who was at the same screening with his model wife and friends. She consciously avoided him, remained in the theatre chatting with another actor friend in the interval while the others mingled outside, and made a beeline for the exit when the film ended to avoid another run in.

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Rajeev Masand

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