Taapsee Pannu opens up about Kirti Kulhari’s outcry of being sidelined during Pink promotions

Taapsee addressed Kirti’s allegations of being marginalized during the marketing of their 2016 movie Pink in an interview with The Times of India.

Taapsee said, “How would I know? She has the full right to feel the way she does. I would be the last person to tell someone what you are feeling is wrong. If someone has felt a certain way, I’m sure there’s a reason. That person voiced whatever they did. Had I known that she felt sidelined in any way, I would have liked to speak to her at that point and ask if there was something I could do to make it better. Unfortunately, I did not know there was an issue at that point. So, I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t discard her feelings.”

Referring to her terms with Kirti, Taapsee added, “Since she saw our relationship or situation in a certain way, maybe she felt the distance from me. I always kept it professional with her, and I still do. I worked with her in Mission Mangal as well, and I don’t think professionally anything changed for me, because from where I saw it, I did not see any disparity. So, for me, it was the same girl who I worked with in Pink”.

In an interview with Fever FM, Kirti talked candidly about feeling “sidelined” while her movie Pink was being promoted, claiming that Taapsee had turned into “the Pink girl.”

Kirti stated, “When Pink happened, for me, there was never a thought, ‘Who is big or small’ in terms of their status in the industry. I was like it is a story of three girls. That’s how I saw it. I came from a space where I believed ‘We are all actors. We are all together’. But Pink made me feel a lot of ‘big star-small star’ treatment. The people around you make you feel that way.”

She acknowledged that the trailer, which only featured Amitabh Bachchan and Taapsee, surprised her, but Shoojit Sircar reassured her that the movie will be different.

“I saw the trailer was mainly filled with Taapsee and Mr Bachchan. That was first jhatka for me because I know what I have done in the film. Shoojit was like, ‘Don’t worry about it, let the film come out.’ I never do PR. I believe my work will be eventually seen. However, during the promotions, the PR machinery happened for Taapsee because she came after Mr Bachchan (in terms of hierarchy) in that film. Eventually, it became her film and she became the Pink girl in terms of positioning and I saw that happening in front of me. This was the first shocker for me because I couldn’t understand this,” she continued.

Pink, a courtroom thriller directed by Shoojit Sircar, starred Amitabh Bachchan as a lawyer defending three women who were abused by a politician’s son. The movie was adapted in Telugu as Vakeel Saab (2021) and Tamil as Nerkonda Paarvai (2019).