Today’s blind item comes from Mid Day. It’s about this actress, who’s like a superstar now in Bollywood. She is supposed to start shooting for her new film soon along with her boyfriend, who’s currently in Switzerland on a vacation with his guy friends. It is a bit strange considering that they have been apart due to working schedules in different countries and yet, when they are both in India, he chooses to go on vacation with his guy friends. We don’t know whether they are still together or faking it, as per this blind item below.

Bollywood Blind Item

Not Faking It Enough With Her Costar

Rumors of this leading actor couple’s off-on romance have been grist for gossip mills for quite some time, but what came in its wake was something the girl couldn’t dismiss easily. The actress ran the risk of losing a big project in which she has been paired opposite her beau for the third time.

Aware of professional perils, her publicity team has swung into action — damage control involves making a spectacle of her relationship with this cool, young actor. While he has hardly shied away from proclaiming undying love for her, she preferred to maintain a diplomatic stance.

A source says, “There were reports of this actress spending time with her ex, who’s also an actor, while not giving enough time to her beau while completing an assignment abroad. This invited negative publicity.”

The tongue wagging reached a point where she was about to lose a film. “It hampered her brand value and also planted doubts in the filmmaker’s mind about the lead pair’s equation. So, her image managers devised a quick-fix solution — portray the couple as madly in love and ready go public,” adds the source.

OSOP Guesses

Leading Couple: Deepika Padukone & Ranveer Singh
Ex: Ranbir Kapoor

We have been asked by one of OSOP’s readers to post this blind item that was narrated by Tisca Chopra. Tisca was the actress, who played Darsheel Safary’s mum in ‘Taare Zameen Pe’. In a session that she recently did with Kommune India, Tisha very casually recalled this incident when she just started out as an actress. It’s indeed a first time we are hearing an actress openly accusing this director-producer of such situation. Actually, who are we kidding? Most actresses don’t talk about these kinds of situations, especially the established ones. It is a true fact that casting couch does happen, but it all depends on who you are dealing with. As for Tisca, now she’s telling this story like it’s funny, but it seems she just got lucky and escaped in time. What if no one had intervene then? Would she have gone ahead with the director? By the way, since this is a delicate situation, we are not putting in our OSOP Guesses. What we will do, instead, is to give you clues as to who Tisca was referring to. But we think you all know who she was, so…..Check out the story below.

Bollywood Blind Item

Tisca Chopra on casting couch and how she tricked her way out of a big Bollywood director's scheme

Taare Zameen Par and Firaaq actor Tisca Chopra talks about her casting couch experience; when a famous writer-director wanted to make her his “pet squeeze”.

Recounting her struggle with a ‘barren’ dates diary after the release and subsequent failture of her first film, Chopra explained how she got a call from a famous producer-director out of the blue. “I’m going to call him RP – for Reptile,” she said explaining he wanted to meet her for the casting of a film which was quite an “extravaganza”.

At his office, RP told Chopra, “you need to learn how to walk in heels, you need a manicure and you need to do a spa for your hair. And you need to learn how to ooze.” Assuming his comments were for her improvement, Chopra took everything he said seriously. She even got the part. But then, she heard the stories.

Concerned friends burst Chopra’s excited bubble, educating her about the ways of the director. “They said, but you know, agreeing to do a film with him is like agreeing to be his pet squeeze for the duration of the shoot. Are you okay with that?”

Chopra was reeling from this information, when a friend told her about her experience with a Tamil director who wanted to take her location-hunting because he wanted “the script to penetrate every inch of her body.”

The work-dignity conundrum

Knowing she needed that role, Chopra considered befriending RP’s wife, talking to his son and even Reptile himself so she could tell him off. Meanwhile, they started shooting in Bombay and everything seemed to go smoothly. That was until the ‘outdoor shoot’, where she was in the same hotel, same floor and in adjacent rooms with RP. On the third day, after directing her ‘closely’, Reptile suggested, “so let’s meet in my room for dinner we’ll discuss the script.”

Not one to jeopardise her dignity, Chopra came up with a plan which if worked, could do really well and if it not, she’d be on a plane back to India.

The plan

“Come eight o’clock I go to the hotel’s flower and cake shop, I buy this exotic bouquet… and this box of luxurious chocolates and I knock on Reptile’s door. And he says come in, and he’s sitting in a satin maroon lungi kurta. It was so tight, it was so cheesy, but there he was reclining.” Chopra proceeded to give him the flowers, chocolates, a big hug and lots of thanks for “shooting her beautifully”.

“He looked a little surprised when he saw me behave this way. Because he said that he didn’t expect the fly to be so enthusiastic to walk into the spider’s web,” explained Chopra.

“And just then, the phone rang. And it was his son calling.” Basically, Chopra made plans with young crew members of the film – including Reptile’s son – to go out for the night and went on to ask the hotel operator to transfer all calls for her room, to his room.

“So I pretended to put my hand over the receiver and I said, ya ya ya I’m in sir’s room discussing the script. Sir how long do you think it’ll take?” She ended up getting 5-6 calls in succession asking her to come down and join the party. “And sir just lost his desire to discuss the script and that was that. And I was not on a plane to India, and we did finish the film and it was great fun,” said Chopra.

OSOP Guesses

Reptile: Tisca most likely named this director “Reptile” because of his eyes’ colour, which was not hard to guess at all. In case you don’t know what colour are a reptile’s eyes, here’s a picture to refresh your memory. As for the son, Tisca doesn’t give any more clue on who he is, but there’s only one son in Bollywood, who assisted his dad on many films and some films that were shot as early as in the 90s. And yes, the son also happens to have reptile eyes. Now you guess who!