Taapsee On Gandhari: ‘I’m Not A Huge Fan Of Doing Action’

‘The idea of hitting someone is not okay with me at a personal level, so it requires an extra effort for me to come out of that mental barrier.’

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu in Gandhari.

Taapsee Pannu‘s latest film Gandhari, an action drama, takes her into a very different emotional space.

After Assi, she returns to action, but this time, as a mother who will go to any length to find her kidnapped daughter.

“The idea of putting myself in that place is very nerve-wracking,” Taapsee tells Subhash K Jha.

Gandhari has come after Assi. Do you see this as a natural progression from one relevant theme to another?

I don’t see it like that. I got Assi as a good script to work on. Around the same time, I got Gandhari. I just choose good scripts. I don’t really think strategically about whether this is the right film to go to next.

The only thing I probably would have thought of was to do an action film after Naam Shabana and Baby.

Why action after so long?

I deliberately didn’t want to touch action for some time after that. It was physically exhausting because of the kind of action they made me do in those films.

Both are hand-to-hand combat, where I have to do everything myself. No fancy budgets for face replacement and VFX.

So, yeah, doing everything by yourself can be exhausting. That’s why I decided to take a long break from action.

What made you say yes to Gandhari?

Action was one of the things. (Writer-Producer) Kanika Dhillon knew I was primarily looking at doing action with a different emotional slant from what I had done before since I had already done that mission-driven woman doing it for the country.

I wanted to try a different emotion based on action. In Gandhari, I am not a trained assassin. I am not someone who has gone with a plan to go from point A to B.

It’s a mother, who emotionally deep-dives in the pool and tries to learn to swim through it. So, it’s a different way of approaching action sequences as well.

The choreography of the action sequences was according to the capability of this character, knowing that she is not a trained assassin. That’s why it was new for me.

‘I don’t confine entertainment to one particular genre’

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu and Ishwak Singh in Gandhari.

How important is it for you to entertain your audience while making a cinematic statement?

For me, entertainment is about holding the audience’s attention for the entire duration of the film.

I don’t confine entertainment to one particular genre like, oh, entertainment means you need to laugh, or entertainment means you need to show large-scale dances on screen.

I think, will this film be relevant to sit and watch through two hours? Otherwise, it’s not worth showing to the audience.

Your association with Kanika is hugely productive. What makes the two of you so compatible?

I think the story has transitioned from just knowing of each other to knowing each other really well, from Manmarziyaan till now.

We know each other at a personal level now. What helps is that she knows what I am looking forward to do, what genre, what kind of character, and she adds her style to that genre or the twists and turns to that character. Her style of writing is fairly on the nose, the conventional, mainstreamish style of presenting characters.

There is something edgy and different about those characters, so she mixes my requirement, my expectation, with her style and presents the film.

Also…

Go ahead?

There is a very strong belief factor. She believes that I can pull it off, and I have faith in her that she will handle things at the back end, be it scripting or now, as a producer.

I have faith that she has it in her to make sure that whatever she has written is translated well on screen.

‘There have been good and bad years for Shero films’

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu in Gandhari.

Lately, there has been a resurgence of Shero films. Does that give you a sense of pride as you have been doing it all along?

I have seen ups and downs with Shero films. When I started off, there weren’t many. Then, slowly, there was at least one Shero film every month.

Then, there were a few years when they were scared of releasing a film driven by a Shero because they were not working at the box office, even if they were good.

So there have been good and bad years for Shero films.

You have grown with the Shero genre?

Yes, I feel happy about that. This is a genre that probably started just when I was beginning.

But when any film with a female protagonist fails, it makes me feel bad because it’s not a setback for just one film but also a setback for the entire genre because people’s faith in it wavers.

Gandhari is about a mother going all out to protect her daughter. How far would you go for your loved one?

The idea of putting myself in that place is very nerve-wracking.

It is very difficult to say to what extent I would go. I would want to go to the extent Gandhari has gone because there is no replacement for that loved one in your life, unless you get the support of the governmental system. Then it becomes easier for you to jump into this journey of making sure you get the loved one back.

But if you don’t, if your whole existence is going to make you feel bad about not trying enough to get your loved one, you might as well just go all out.

It’s very difficult for me to sit in my comfortable place and say that, oh, I can do everything this character has done.

But yeah, if I think of it, I would want to do everything that my character in Gandhari has done to get my loved one back.

‘I find it very difficult to rate my own films’

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu in Gandhari.

In your impressive oeuvre, where would you place Gandhari?

I don’t know. I find it very difficult to rate my own films, to choose favourites out of my own films. All of them have taken a considerable amount of time out of my life which will never come back.

Some take a little more physical effort, some take less. For example, Assi did not require any physical effort but mental exhaustion.

Gandhari was not just mental exhaustion, it also had physical exhaustion. So they are different ways I look at my films, but I can never rate them. It’s like never ask your mother to choose a favourite child.

But I am not a huge fan of doing action.

That is surprising.

The idea of hitting someone is not okay with me at a personal level, so it requires an extra effort for me to come out of that mental barrier.

I have to really look at the action pieces like sports or choreography because the idea of killing or hitting someone doesn’t go down well with me.m So it becomes very difficult to perform.

‘Both Kangana and I will not mince words’

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu in Gandhari.

Kangana Ranaut was making uncharitable remarks about you once again. Why is this mandatory rigour you go through every time you have a new film releasing?

I make appearances only around my films. Otherwise, I go away to refresh, rejuvenate, and not really cater to my public image.

People get to meet me or ask questions on public platforms only around my film releases, and strangely, it looks like it’s been years that people have not been able to get over it.

But this doesn’t start unless a journalist asks question to either her or me, and I believe, both of us will not mince words and will be very honest about our feelings.

I’ve been very respectful of her talent. I’ve been very vocal about it too. I’ve mentioned whatever I’ve liked and whatever I felt about her, whenever asked.

So either people should stop expecting me to be honest with my answers, or start expecting that I will avoid their question, which I have never done.

People are actually falling short of headlines. They want to trigger this again because it’s the same reaction, the same answer, the same emotion that both of us have for each other.

What do you have to say about the plagiarism charges that were dropped just days before the film’s release?

I feel this question is more relevant to the makers, writers or producers. I think they have issued statements.

We are pretty confident that our film is a piece of original work.

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff