If there is one thing Taapsee Pannu has no shortage of in her filmography, it is intense roles. She has played women caught in difficult situations, fought battles on screen and headlined several thrillers and dramas including Pink, Haseen Dillruba, Assi, Thappad and more. But the actor is ready to step away from all that.
As she gears up for Gandhari , Taapsee says she would love nothing more than to be given a fun, light-hearted rom-com.
Ishwak Singh plays Gokul, a father searching for his missing daughter, while Jatin Sarna steps in as Kabir, the police officer handling the investigation. Swastika Mukherjee, Mita Vashisht and Chhaya Kadam round out the cast. The film premieres on Netflix on September 3.
Taapsee feels Khel Khel Mein, the 2024 comedy led by Akshay Kumar, was a chance for her to step away from the intense roles she is usually associated with. Because she didn’t want to keep going back to the same kind of roles, she reveals that she has turned down several investigation dramas and action films. “Because it just felt like there’s a creative bankruptcy where you can’t imagine a person — if you’re calling someone a good actor, not me, if anybody, a good actor — then please put the faith in that person to be able to perform range. Because that’s the only genre that people have started imagining me [in], “I will choose the best out of it and present that, but it will still be a strong woman, intense film. Because she wanted to have fun and explore a lighter, more comic side of herself, she took up the film.
She has been waiting for filmmakers to look beyond the kind of roles they have come to associate with her. “Please tell people, have mercy, give me something light. She feels that once an actor finds success in a particular genre, the industry often gets comfortable casting them in the same space. “When we see a certain actor good with a certain kind of roles and genres and worlds, we just want to play safe and keep casting that actor in the same world. “I can’t begin to tell you the number of films I have turned down — investigation films that I have turned down, like a lot. Action films that I turned down after Naam Shabana and Baby until now,” she adds. “I knew there were seven of us on the table. I just get to have some fun is why I did that film. The actor credits filmmaker Mudassar Aziz for looking beyond the image associated with her and trusting her with comedy. “Mudassar, being someone who knows me personally, knows what I can pull off. So thankfully he did have the creative mind to give me that. But people, after loving that character also so much, if they cannot imagine me pulling off comedy, it’s their fault, not mine. I was never given an opportunity. I’ve tried to latch onto it, but I should be given that opportunity,” she adds.
Taapsee says it’s not that she doesn’t want to do lighter films. I would love to see you in a rom-com,” she tells Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview, laughing, before adding, “I would love to do it too. “There’s a certain kind of creative imagination that our industry is not that good with,” she says. Taapsee says she has made a conscious effort to move away from this image. Taapsee feels an actor’s filmography often says more about the roles they are offered than what they are actually capable of doing. “It’s not my fault if I am only offered 10 intense films,” she says. “I literally did Khel Khel Mein for me to have fun,” she reveals.
