Deepika Padukone's ad faces plagiarism charges

Deepika Padukone in the ad, and a still from Yeh Ballet

Deepika Padukone's new denim commercial has landed the makers in hot water for ‘intellectual theft'. Writer-director Sooni Taraporevala has called out the production designer for blatantly copying the set from her 2020 Netflix film, Yeh Ballet. "Are you so creatively bankrupt?" asked Taraporevala, who is the writer of Mississippi Masala (1991), The Namesake (2006) and the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay (1988).

In an Instagram post, she wrote, "I was shocked to see our Yeh Ballet dance studio set in the ad because it was created out of a derelict space by production designer Shailaja Sharma, and dismantled after the shoot. No such dance studio exists in Mumbai, which is why we built it."

Sooni Taraporevala and Deepika Padukone

Taraporevala is further shocked by the ad's production designer Rupin Suchak's admission on social media that the director ‘asked him to make it that way'. "They saw Yeh Ballet and decided to plagiarise our set down to the last detail. Would Levi's and the director ever think of doing it in the West without permission, and passing it off as their own creative work? Copycat culture in India needs to be called out and cancelled," Taraporevala further wrote.