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Armpit Abashed - Rajeev Masand
This week's blind item by Rajeev Masand
An advertising agency involved in a major repositioning campaign for a popular deodorant brand made the mistake of hiring a well known but has-been female movie star for an ad film it was shooting recently. The 30-something actress, thrilled to be employed again, insisted on involving herself with every little detail of the ad, and reportedly demanded that her outfits for the commercial be sourced from a leading Bollywood designer. Agency representatives suggested the designer would be “unnecessarily expensive”, but the actress would have it no other way. She’d shared a warm and close friendship with him during her successful years, and she was convinced he’d “make her look good”.
On the morning of the shoot, however, the designer didn’t even bother showing up. He sent a few outfits with an assistant, and the actress hit the roof when she saw them, insisting they were “all rubbish”. Both the stylist and a senior agency representative on the set agreed that the outfits just didn’t work and realised that the designer had taken them for a ride, charging them a fat fee for “stuff that had to have been hanging around on his rack because nobody wanted it”. Production assistants were promptly rushed to the nearest Mango outlet to pick up some decent replacements. The actress didn’t step out of her trailer throughout, huffing and puffing angrily.
When she was handed over the new outfits, she picked one she liked, changed into it, and arrived on set without much fuss. But that’s when she sprung the big shocker. When the ad-film director explained the concept of the shoot, the actress coolly remarked: “But I don’t expose my underarms.” A long silence fell on the set; the actress was ushered back to her trailer while everyone else deliberated in a corner. When the actress couldn’t be persuaded into “making an exception this one time”, the agency rep informed her she’d have to be replaced because there was no way they could shoot a commercial for a deodorant without showing the model use the product.
The actress, who has a comeback film lined up for release, didn’t take the news too badly, but the agency spent half the day searching for a suitable replacement who could be persuaded to shoot at an hour’s notice. Eventually, the agency settled for a relatively unknown model.
