Who’s that girl

For a British tabloid Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone is an ‘impeccably turned-out’ ‘leggy brunette’. While fans in India are not amused with the ignorance of international media that failed to recognise her, should this be a wake-up call for the actress to rethink her PR machinery

“Two minutes of silence for her Facebook page ”, went one of the many jokes that surfaced on the Internet, soon after a UK tabloid identified Deepika Padukone as no more than a “leggy brunette” dining with tennis star Novak Djokovic in LA. While the actress, who is a close friend of Djokovic, had a fine evening sampling the delights at The Nice Guy, a swish restaurant in LA, the aftermath of it was not quite pleasant on the Internet at least. Fans in India slammed the UK tabloid for failing to recognise Deepika. In fact, some even likened the tabloid to Maria Sharapova who had once innocently confessed that she didn’t know who Sachin Tendulkar was.

The tabloid report went as follows: ‘Novak flashed the paps a cheeky grin before joining his impeccably turned-out friend in the back seat of a getaway car The leggy brunette slipped her towering figure into a flirty frock ” Nowhere was a mention of the name ‘Deepika Padukone’.

On the work front, things couldn’t be better for the actress who has been dutifully spreading the word about her first Hollywood film xXx: The Return of Xander Cage. There are photo updates on Instagram and her other social networking handles, veiled and not-so-veiled references to co-star Vin Diesel. The “Diesel-Deepika” memes nearly broke the Internet on a few occasions. The lady has even been the toast of all the recent film awards in India and her NGO Live Laugh and Love has also been much-talked-about. One wouldn’t commonly imagine that someone of her celebrity stature could go unrecognised by a certain section of international media. But as it appears that too has happened and even while staying unnamed, the actress managed to remain a top trending topic for the most part of Thursday. While many are still searching for answers as to how she could be a nameless face, industry insiders in Bollywood feel that it could be the result of an inadequate PR machinery. Rajesh Thadani, one of the top distributors of the industry, says, “I think this is a failure on the part of her PR machinery. When you want to break into a new industry, you need a good PR construct. Ideally, this story should have reached them before anybody had a chance to not recognise her. For people in this business recognition and visibility is everything. Look at Priyanka Chopra and even Aishwarya — how well recognised they are now. You need good representation when you are entering a new industry.”

The paparazzi not being able to recognise a foreign face is not uncommon in any part of the world, says freelance photographer Viral Bhayani. When Fast and Furious director Rob Cohen was snapped with Hrithik and Rakesh Roshan, initially several tabloids in India had failed to identify the Hollywood biggie.

Viral points out, “One needs to remember that in every media industry, when it comes to celebs, the priority is hyper-local. There are so many international stars who come here and get clicked by us but many media houses don’t publish them nor identify them simply because they are not interested in them. They are more interested in the local content. For instance when the NBA stars come here, their photos are not published much even though they are legends in their own field. Ninety per cent of times, the paparazzi doesn’t recognise these people, because obviously they’ve never heard of them. So unless it’s a ‘Leonardo Di Caprio’ kind of figure, the local media is not interested in people who are famous in certain regions only. In that sense, Deepika is a nobody in their local news circle.”

Celebrity photographer Dabboo Ratnani feels this is a classic case of much ado about nothing. “Indian celebs are only recognised in places where Indian cinema is famous — except for two or three stars such as Mr Bachchan, who is recognised as the face of Bollywood because he’s been here for so many years. I am sure in ten years’ time Deepika too will be at that level. But a Bollywood actor not being recognised in a place where Bollywood is not that famous, is not a big deal at all.”