How Aishwarya Rai Bachchan stopped a fuming Abhishek Bachchan from reacting to Vivek Oberoi's crass meme
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was at Cannes Film Festival when the controversy happened
Last week, Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi drew the nation's ire as he shared a distasteful meme on exit polls featuring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Salman Khan.
Oberoi, who reportedly dated Aishwarya in early 2000s, shared a bizarre meme on May 20 on his offical Twitter handle that referred to Salman Khan and Aishwarya's relationship as the 'opinion poll,' Vivek and Aishwarya's affair as the 'exit poll' and her current family with husband Abhishek Bachchan and daughter Aaradhya Bachchan as the 'final result.'
"Haha! creative! No politics here... just life," Oberoi captioned the photo and credited the Twitter account that shared it. While the actor might have posted the exit poll meme - a take on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections - thinking it is funny, others did not quite share the same feeling. The actor received severe backlash from all quarters for trying to shame Aishwarya for her past relationships. Many from the film industry including Sonam Kapoor, Urmila Matondkar, Anupam Kher, Esha Gupta and Madhur Bhandarkar slammed the actor.
But, the one person whose reaction was most expected - Aishwarya's husband Abhishek - didn't even acknowledge Vivek's tweet. Read on to find why...
Aishwarya came to know about Vivek Oberoi's nasty tweet when she was at the Cannes Film Festival and as per a report in Times of India, it did come as a huge shock for the actress. The unnecessary controvery not just left Aish perplexed but also highly disturbed.
(Picture by PTI)
Vivek Oberoi's tweet understandably left Abhishek infuriated, but Aish stopped him from retaliating. Abhishek, who is known for his cool temparent, was ready to give it back to Vivek but Aishwarya calmed him down over the phone from Cannes and made him understand how it was just a publicity stunt to promote his film, 'PM Narendra Modi' and by reacting to it they would just be giving Oberoi the undeserved mileage that he was actually looking for.
"Even if one woman is offended by my reply to the meme, it calls for remedial action. Apologies tweet deleted," Vivek tweeted on May 21 after being severely criticised on social media.
"Sometimes what appears to be funny and harmless at first glance to one, may not be so to others. I have spent the last 10 years empowering more than 2000 underprivileged girls, I can't even think of being disrespectful to any woman ever," he added.
In his initial reaction to the criticism, Oberoi claimed it was a “non-issue” and people were “politicising” the post unnecessarily. He declared he had nothing to apologise for. He told news agency ANI: "I have no problem in apologising, but tell me what wrong have I done? If I have done something wrong I will apologise, I don't think I have done anything wrong."
People were making a "huge issue out of it", he said, adding that he just "laughed at the meme". He also said he was "appreciating the person for the creativity".
"Those in the meme don't have a problem, but everyone else has," he claimed.