Taapsee Pannu: setting a relentless pace

With five films scheduled to release in 2021, the straight-talking actor on female-driven projects, her social media strategy, and why she doesn’t think of herself as a star yet

As a celebrity, Taapsee Pannu understands that she has a platform and is not afraid to make her opinions known. But there’s a life rule that she adopted early on, which continues to be an integral part of her social media strategy: hate the sin and not the sinner. “Sinners keep changing. Someone who you might never have thought would commit that sin might do it, but the sin is going to be the same regardless,” she explains. At a time when silence has been the mantra for many of her contemporaries, this Sikhni from Delhi isn’t afraid to stick her neck out. “I have always been an opinionated person, even when I was younger,” says Pannu, who has tweeted about the farmer protests and, more recently, on giving writers due credit for their work. “But I am also not someone who has an opinion on everything. I speak about things that really affect me. I don’t have extreme views on things because I do listen to the other side as well.” We spoke with the actor on a weekend evening recently: Zoom-ready, without a speck of make-up, and tucked away in what she describes as the ‘Indian corner’ of her Mumbai apartment. Interestingly, while other outspoken actors have had to pay a price for their candour, in Pannu’s case it’s become an integral part of her brand. “My standing instruction to my team is to not engage with a brand if they seem concerned about my social media presence. Most of my brand associations go way back to my early Hindi films like Baby [2014]. They come to me because of my image and my social media presence is an integral part of that. Brands that want a clean or fake image just don’t come to me,” she adds with a shrug.