Taapsee Pannu has been part of three sporty films back to back – Rashmi Rocket that released in October 2021, followed by Looop Lapeta in January 2022, and her next film is the Mithali Raj biopic, Shabash Mithu. Ask Taapsee if this was a pure coincidence, and the actress says, “Obviously, there’s no way I could have planned this. But yeah, I think everybody is now well-versed with the fact that I can make for a believable athlete, because of my sheer love of sports.”
“I’ve been a huge sports lover. I’ve watched more sports than movies, actually. So I think that love for sports that’s been there since my childhood is being useful here,” Taapsee continues in an exclusive conversation with News18. “I never really wanted to be a sportsperson, for some reason, in my head, I never saw that as a career option for myself. I just enjoyed playing different kinds of sports. I think that is quite visible. I’ve been a pretty active, outdoor person. Be it action or sports, it seamlessly fits in with my body language. And so people cast me in these roles.”
Rashmi Rocket had Taapsee play an Indian track and field athlete, while Looop Lapeta is the Indian adaptation of Run Lola Run, and evidently, involved a lot of running. Coincidentally, there seems to be a continuity of sorts between Rashmi Rocket and Looapop Lapeta. “This film very unexpectedly landed in my hands, just after Rashmi Rocket, and strangely, without my intervention, Looop Lapeta seems to begin where Rashmi ends- with the final race. It begins with her final race where she gets injured, and then is tired and gives up athletics. So it has coincidentally become a follow-up of sorts. I didn’t really plan it like that,” Taapsee explains.
The shooting and prep for the two films also overlapped, ensuring that the actress was at the top of her fitness at all times. Wasn’t it demanding, to deliver one physically challenging role after another? “Yeah, but thankfully that was taken care of because of the kind of build that I had made for Rashmi Rocket. Looop Lapeta has been a film which we finished in two schedules. In the first schedule, I was training for Rashmi Rocket while I was shooting for Looop Lapeta, because just after the first schedule of Looop Lapeta, I had to finish the races for Rashmi Rocket, so I was at the peak of my fitness at that time. But that first schedule of Looop Lapeta was all indoor, no outdoor running. I finished the Rashmi races and went to the outdoor schedule of Looop Lapeta, which was all about running. So I ended up exhausting myself to the limit.
“I didn’t run for Rashmi that much, because it was just 100 meters or 200 meters stretches, and that too on professional tracks. But when I was running for duplicate, I was running on roads and over potholes and hurdles and all those things for two weeks at a stretch. That was very, very challenging. All the fitness and stamina that I’d built almost for a year for Rashmi is what came into use during Looop Lapeta,” Taapsee says.
During the second schedule for Looop Lapeta, Taapsee started training for Shabash Mithu. “In that second schedule, I was training for Shabash Mithu. Every day I used wake up for my cricket training in the morning, and then go shoot the running sequences for Looop Lapeta,” she says.
