AS AN ACTOR, I CAN ONLY USE MY MEDIUM TO BRING ABOUT AWARENESS: TAAPSEE PANNU

Actress Taapsee Pannu recently joined NewsX for a insightful conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. In the interview, she spoke about her latest film “Rashmi Rocket” that throws light on the issue of gender testing in sports. In the exclusive conversation, Taapsee spoke about how she handled the tough or uncomfortable scenes in the movie, how gender testing impact players and much more. Excerpts:

Speaking about the factors that convinced her to play “Rashmi Rocket”, Taapsee said, “Two reasons: first was I love sports. I love to follow sports. For me, sports stars are real heroes. I am in awe of them, so when I got to know about this particular testing, how it has only been done on females, it was shocking for me that someone like me, who loves sports so much, had no clue about something so crazy happening even till date.”

Sharing insights on the practice of gender testing across the world, she said, “Yes, this happening all over the world. Even in the last Tokyo Olympics, there were two Namibian players, who were banned because of same-gender testing. As an actor, I can only use my medium to bring about a certain kind of awareness and discussions. I can’t assure that the change will happen. It is not like after ‘Pink’, the molestation or rapes stopped. It is not like after ‘Thappad’, the domestic violence stopped. However, at least the conversions started. The topic became a mainstream or dining table conversation, not just keeping it under wraps.”

When asked about how she is able to handle these tough scenes in her films, she responded, “I’ve been living with this script through the lockdown. Actually, it has been in my head since I heard it in 2018, so it has been there in my head since then. As I just told you, I was so shocked to hear that this still happens. When the script came in my hand and the screenplay was ready, we were in early 2020. Since then, I’ve been living with it at the back of my head, so I was already mentally prepared to dive into it. How to get rid of it was like, as an actor, you feel a sense of accomplishment if it affects you in real, if it actually makes me pause and take a little while to get back to reality. That means I have done a decent job doing it, so that happens doing that job. I have felt it inside, it mean the camera would have captured it. So, that sense of happiness helps me get out of it because then I feel, ‘okay, I did my job, I did what was in my hands to push this topic out, now let’s be ready to see what the audience does’, so that happiness makes me get out of the role.”