Deepika Padukone not to blame, says Sooni Taraporevala after accusing her ad of plagiarism

Director Sooni Taraporevala has clarified that her accusations of plagiarism against the creatives behind an apparel ad have nothing to do with Deepika Padukone, who was featured in it.

Filmmaker Sooni Taraporevala, who on Tuesday accused the creatives behind a recently released apparel ad of plagiarism, has said that the actors in the advertisement are not to be blamed. The studio shown in the ad, which featured Deepika Padukone, appeared to have been lifted from Sooni's film, Yeh Ballet.

Deepika Padukone in a still from the advertisement.

In an edit to her original Instagram post, she wrote, "PS: contrary to what clickbait news headlines say, this has nothing to do with Deepika Padukone or anyone else in the cast."

In her post, she'd accused the creatives of 'intellectual property theft' and asked, "What were you thinking?" She wrote that the culture of copying others' work must stop. "I was shocked to see our Yeh Ballet dance studio set in this ad, because it was conceptualized & created out of a derelict space by @shalzoid (our PD) from scratch and dismantled after our shoot. Basically @nadiaeye (the director of this ad) saw Yeh Ballet and decided to plagiarize our set down to the very last detail," she'd written.

Yeh Ballet was released on Netflix in 2019. The film follows two Mumbai kids, who dream of dancing the ballet, much to the disapproval of their families and society. Deepika shared the advertisement, for the apparel brand Levi's, on her Instagram page last week.

The ad's production designer, Rupin Suchak, admitted that the similarities were deliberate. "That's exactly like the studio in the film Yeh Ballet, did you guys shoot there?" one person commented, and Rupin's reply, according to the screenshot shared by Sooni was, "Yes we did :) in fact that’s what our director wanted so we had to recreate that.”