Taapsee Pannu on losing out on work: ‘Sometimes the hero doesn’t want you in the film’

During the interview, Chief Managing Editor Sonal Kalra, Entertainment and Lifestyle, Hindustan Times, asked Taapsee Pannu, “One has known that about you, that you just speak up your mind. Sometimes you actually also in a very self-deprecating, lovely way, make fun of the fact that you speak up your mind and sometimes have to suffer on that. But have you ever lost out on work? Forget about all other things, politics etc, but have you ever lost out on work because you spoke your mind?”

Hearing this, Taapsee replied, “I honestly didn’t get to know about it firsthand. I might have, but that, you know, it doesn’t come to you. It just gets like, someone is like, ‘No, no, I don’t want to work with her because so and so reason.’ And then, you know, the thing never reached you itself, so you don’t get to know about it. What I get to know about, is, only things like, sometimes the hero doesn’t want you to be in the film. That’s a, I think everybody knows, heroes decide, in a film that has a hero heroine, most of the times, unless you have a director who is like the biggest star. Because some directors are star directors, and when they say they want someone, they want to take someone. So like, for example, when Raju sir wanted me in the film (Dunki), I was in the film. It might just be a big shock for everybody because I’m not in the quintessential circuit of, you know, those kind of films or, or Shah Rukh sir’s regular pair onscreen. So it was a pretty shock, big shock for a lot of people, I feel. But that was because the director was so sure that he wanted me.”

The actor further stated, “So the same way it works, but otherwise it’s the hero, or… yeah, I sometimes hear that I’m a little too difficult to work with, and I fail to understand that because anyone who opens my filmography can see it that the directors who worked with me have repeated me, and that cannot happen with someone who is difficult to work with. Nobody wants trouble again and again and again in their films. So yeah, and of course, the people who have not worked with me are the ones who say like that because they probably don’t know me, and I’m not a very social person. So I can’t go out there to show up how I really am. So I think I let my work do the talking, which is slightly harder route, but I think I’m saner that way.”

On the film front, Taapsee’s latest courtroom drama Assi, helmed by Anubhav Sinha, arrived in theatres on February 20 last week.