Expresso, Episode 8: The struggle is harder when you don’t come from a film family: Taapsee Pannu
19/02/2018
Taapsee Pannu, who was often complimented on her Preity Zinta like demeanour, has managed to create a vibe uniquely her own a combination of bubbly and badass. After a bravura performance in Pink which was unanimously hailed, she followed it up with Naam Shabana, a spy-actioner where she played the eponymous role. She rounded things off with a typical Hindi film heroine avatar in the commercial comic caper Judwaa 2. With these three films, the sardarni who started her acting journey in Telugu and Tamil films is now a bonafide actress in Hindi films. True to the explorer’s spirit, Pannu deep-dived into professional acting in a gap year when she was preparing for the CAT exams after her Engineering degree. She turned down a job that she had landed at Infosys and given her background in modelling, she quite by chance wandered into the movies business. “I have always been an adventurous child, and always felt ki ‘kar ke dekhte hain,’ she explains, laughing.
Taapsee Pannu, even after becoming a star in South-Indian films had a hard time finding herself a home in Mumbai. So when she moved to the city initially she could not find herself a place to live in. “As a single person in Mumbai, I had trouble finding houses. Nobody wanted to give their apartment to a single working girl, that too an actress. They said things like, ‘Struggling actors aa jaate hain aur unke paas paise nahin hote hain’. “I had the toughest time trying to convince them that I had the money to pay my rent,” she says with a twinkle in her eye.
Being a DIY millennial has helped Pannu tide over the quirks of being single in the city, but her middle-class grounding and no-filter attitude among other things, make the actress a bit of a misfit in showbusiness that is as much about talent as about navigating carefully through professional conundrums. Faced with the question whether she has ever regretted the choice, the young actress is her candid self.
“On camera, I am in heaven, I love my job. That’s what keeps me going. Off camera, there are things that I feel –ye nahin hoga mujhse– this is not something I can do. The struggle is harder when you don’t come from a film family. Sometimes you get rejected just because you don’t come from an influential background so that kind of breaks your heart a lot of times. At that time to pick yourself up is difficult. In such times you think ‘kahan aa gaye, ya kyun aa gaye,” she admits.
In spite of having a good run, the actress got a taste of the much talked about industry nepotism, something that she even tweeted about. I quiz her about the cryptic tweet and she says, “Around that time, I was about to start something it was after Pink when there was no more a question ki yeh acting nahin kar sakti or that she is not a name that people will like to see on screen, but you are still swept aside and someone else is chosen over you because they are related to so and so. You just get sidelined in a matter of few seconds and it has got nothing to do with your talent. So I got introduced to that,” discloses Taapsee, adding, “There are so many times our presence is not valued as much as a star kid’s presence even though they haven’t earned that space which people like us have slogged for. We have worked from scratch to be where we are. Despite that, we are very easily taken out of a project, and that hurts.”
Luckily for her, the actress has made good friends in both the South film industry as well as in Bollywood, something that she has worked on. It’s important to have a comfortable working equation with her colleagues, cedes Taapsee Pannu who shares a good rapport with both directors and actors. Shoojit Sircar, David Dhawan, Neeraj Pandey, Akshay Kumar, Varun Dhawan and even Jacqueline Fernandes (although the Pannu and Fernandes were rumoured to not get along during the shoot of Judwaa 2) are a few people that she shares a good rapport with.
“Akshay Sir, whenever he meets me anywhere is so warm and encouraging. Poori film bana di mere liye and he himself took a backseat, so what more can I ask for?”
She carries a deep sense of gratitude for the film industry in general and the audience in South India in particular. Their acceptance of her, a rank outsider who was not even familiar with the language compelled her to learn the languages. “Meri ek guideline hai Jiska koi nahin hota, uski janta hoti hai. The people’s support made me want to give back so I went to a language school, learnt Tamil and Telugu and also the craft. I am happy the way things are turning out.” Today she is fluent in both the languages. Other serendipitous events in her life include that one time when she was seated next to the President of India at the screening of her film Pink. Or even the occasion when people told her that they had enrolled for martial arts lessons after watching her in Naam Shabana.
Currently, Taapsee Pannu is in a happy space with plenty of films of different genres namely Dil Juunglee (romcom), Mulk (thriller) and Soorma (sports biopic) coming up but of course, there are a few things that she hasn’t crossed off the bucket list yet. Playing the heroine in a Mani Ratnam film is one such. “Ever since my first film, I have been saying that I want to be a Mani Ratnam heroine, but he is just not listening,” she says laughing.
Given her lucky streak, and ‘kar ke dekhte hain’ approach to life, the actress’ wish could well turn into reality, sooner than later.
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