A firebrand who calls a spade a spade—that's Taapsee Pannu for you. But in Anubhav Sinha's Thappad, she is wonderfully understated. As the subdued Amrita who re-assesses her marriage when her husband slaps her, the actor drives home a vital point, without raising the decibel level.
When we get on a call with her, that's where we start our chat. "Amrita is too white, I am all shades of grey. She is in control [of her emotions] and lets things seep in, whereas I am impulsive. So, it was claustrophobic to play her for 30 days in a row. I was stifled because the character was not giving it back until the puja scene. I had to shed the image of a firebrand and cater to an average Indian woman who is conditioned to place others before herself," shares Pannu.
Despite being a woman-centric story, she believes the layered male parts—particularly Vikram played by Pavail Gulati—bring out the film's essence. "It's a no-brainer to leave a man who hits his wife all the time. [In contrast] Vikram does everything right, but he doesn't feel the need to apologise [for the slap]. This film is about entitlement and relationships. Normalising patriarchy is wrong, and men and women are equally responsible. Which is why the female lawyer asking her to move on is a crucial scene." The actor points out how the film compels us to shake off our age-old conditioning. "At a screening, a middle-aged woman debated that Amrita was taking matters too far. I asked her simply, 'Would you say the same thing if Vikram had hit his father in rage?' She didn't have an answer."
For a film that champions gender equality, isn't it ironical that Thappad had to move its Women's Day release to accommodate Baaghi 3? She laughs, "It was not for Baaghi 3, we would have changed the release date to avoid a clash with any film. Our movie deserves a fair chance, and by the time Women's Day came, we wanted positive word-of-mouth to spread among the audience."
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