New Delhi: There was a time when she had to pick the best from whatever was offered. However, times have now changed for actor Taapsee Pannu. She has said she is getting to choose from ‘more diverse roles, scripts and genres’. Taapsee Pannu said it has given her the scope of experimentation.
The Bollywood star’s, Haseen Dillruba, a romance-thriller, is coming out on Netflix July 2. She then has back-to-back movies on her slate be it Rashmi Rocket, Looop Lapeta, Dobaara, Shabaash Mithu or Jana Gana Mana“.
Taapsee asserted she would not let a good script go to others even if that means working more than 300 days in a year. “I think I am yet to reach that stage where I will work only in one or two movies a year. I am selfish in this case. So if I get a good script, I will not let it go to others. It means working a little extra, overworking or working for 300 days or more in a year, which I do,” Taapsee firmly said.
The Manmarziyaan star said she has worked hard to reach a stage in her career where she has the luxury to select projects.
“I will not let a good script go. This is because I have really worked hard to be in this position where I have so much to choose from. There was a time when I had to select from the worst of the scripts. I had to do those for the sake of being visible or for being around,” Taapsee pointed out.
“I have seen those days, so now I am getting to choose from more diverse roles, scripts and genres. However, I don’t want to become complacent,” the actor added.
Taapsee had previously worked in the Anurag Kashyap-directed Manmarziyaan, which Kanika Dhillon wrote. So she was immediately attracted to the writer’s latest story Haseen Dillruba, again set in a small town but exploring a different dynamic and a unique genre of a romantic thriller.
“I wanted to do the film because it was a love story and a thriller. It is something that I have seen only in Hollywood. Since Kanika has written the story, I knew that the woman’s part would be really good as I have worked with her earlier in Manmarziyaan. When I got to know that she had a script like this, I told her, ‘I want to do that’. After reading the script, it was an immediate yes,” Pannu said.
Haseen Dillruba has been directed by Hasee toh Phasee fame Vinil Mathew. It also stars Vikrant Massey and Harshvardhan Rane in lead roles. The film features Taapsee in the role of ‘Rani Kashyap’, a feisty woman who is a fan of a fictional Hindi crime novelist, Dinesh Pandit.
Under investigation as a suspect for the murder of her husband, Rani reveals details about their thorny marriage. However, that seems to further blur the truth about what happened.
Playing Rani, a woman who is led by her heart and is honest to a fault, helped Taapsee explore the space of the so-called ‘anti-heroine’.
Taapsee, 33, said she is more than happy to belong to that space as the likeability of a woman’s character in Hindi cinema, for the longest time, meant someone willing to prioritise others over her happiness.
“If she works for her own happiness, then she becomes unlikeable, a vamp or anti-heroine whereas when a man does this… Runs away with a girl on his own, or revolts from his people, then he is the hero and the girl is selfish. These differences have started to change in cinema. I have experimented in this zone a lot, one of them was Manmarziyaan. This is a new shift because now female characters have layers that were not the case earlier, which is interesting,” Taapsee pointed out.