‘I apologised to Malaika for kissing Arbaaz’

Her promotional peck on actor-producer Arbaaz Khan’s cheeks during a recent event in Mumbai created quite a flutter, but actor Neha Dhupia says she is clean — because she has said her sorries to Khan’s wife Malaika Arora.

“I did apologise to Malaika before it happened, and I promised her it’ll be the first and the last time. It was all in fun and play,” says the 31-year-old. Malaika, too, says she’s cool about it. “Please yaar, I am not an insecure child. It’s an event and it was all done in good humour, so I’m cool,” she says.

Arbaaz, on his part, explains, “It was a marketing event and we followed the instructions. It was done in the open. She is an actor and I am an actor, and a giving a peck here and there is not a big deal. We do this as a profession.”

Dhupia is now hoping to create a stir with her new look in her next flick, Rush, inspired by Sharon Stone’s in Basic Instinct. “She was the closest analogy we could draw. My legs are inspired from that film,” she says.

So does she ape Stone’s infamous blink-and-miss leg-uncrossing scene too? “No. Do not come in thinking you’ll see anything that Sharon Stone showed,” she says.

Prod her if she is seeing someone, as is evident from her recent appearances with Venuzuelan James Sylvester, and she gives it away by saying, “May be. It’s just a secret!”

——-Agencies