Taapsee Pannu who is on a high after her tremendous success in Bollywood with her film PINK talks exclusively to JFW about South Indian film industry, typecast of heroines in movies and her future plans in the South.
Actresses are always typecast and there is also a lack of female-centric roles in the industry. What do you have to say to that?
We’ve been seeing female-centric films quite often in Bollywood. All of them may not have done really well in the box-office, but in the last 2 years, there have been an influx of films where the female character has been the lead and I think that is a great change. There have been films like Kahani, Piku, Tannu Weds Mannu and its sequel, Queen, NH 10, now Pink and even Akira!
And in the South?
I can’t say the same for South. I have tried to fight this battle while I was there…I wouldn’t say I’ve given up but I tried to use a different route. When I began, I didn’t know what was right for me. I was told that I should take up everything that comes my way, especially if there are big names involved. But when films bombed at the box office, the actors weren’t blamed but I was tagged as ‘unlucky’ even though I had a very insignificant role to play. On the contrary, if an actress produces three back-to-back hits, she is touted as the next golden girl in the industry even though she is just a glamour quotient in the film. So basically, superstition matters over talent. So I stopped doing films that I didn’t understand, so from having seven releases a year, I came down to one or two releases a year. People started seeing this as my downfall but I just felt that doing films I don’t believe in hasn’t worked for me.
People didn’t believe me for the longest time, till I ventured out in Hindi, and I started doing the kind of roles I am doing here. Now actresses from the South call me to tell me that they are so happy that I have ventured out of South to do these kinds of films. They tell me that they try to find such films but they end up doing the usual roles because they are the only ones available. Random people call and tell me, “stay there, don’t come back, you won’t get such good work here.’ This is what I mean when I say I took a different route. I wanted to prove my mettle and do impactful roles. Having seen me now, may be there will be some film for me in the South, which is risky enough to have the female as lead. Now, I don’t have anything to lose in South, so I will do cinema I want to do.
If you had to change a few things about how the Indian film industry functions towards women actors, what would they be?
First, please write a good character sketch for a female lead just like you would for a male lead. I recently received a script from the South where the men’s character was so interesting! They had a very good screen presence for the female but there was no depth to her character, she could’ve been anyone. This is something we have to address. I would also like a change in the pay disparity. An actress puts in equal amount of work as an actor in a film and she faces equal amount of backlash if the film doesn’t work. So why such step motherly attitude towards a heroine? At times, the heroines get paid even lesser than the character artists in the film. If they are so less significant then why have them at all? A hero has the liberty to do one film a year because he gets paid that much. As heroines we have to do 2-3 films a year to get a house running!