Taapsee Pannu opens up to Outlook Money about her journey, shares her views on women's financial independence and what makes her tick

One of the things that kept playing in my mind on my way to Juhu’s High Tide Apartment in Mumbai to meet actor-producer Taapsee Pannu was the strong character she played in her 2020 movie Thappad. That is only one of the women-oriented films in Pannu’s filmography, which includes Pink (2016), Saand Ki Aankh (2019), Badla (2019) and Rashmi Rocket (2021), among others. And then there was Dunki, which I watched only recently, where she is one among a gang of friends looking to immigrate to London in the quest of better financial prospects. In this movie, too, Pannu, holds her own when she refuses to go back to India with her boyfriend in a high-strung drama.

The fact that many films, at least in some part, mirror social realities, I wondered how much of what films show can translate into reality. In Thappad, Amrita Sabharwal, played by Taapsee, is shocked out of her wits when her husband slaps her at a party. Over the next few days, she goes through a mix of emotions—from loss of self-respect to a sense of betrayal to the need of finding herself, independent of anyone else. Soon after she walks out of the marriage which she had been devoted to until then.

The movie is a powerful statement on domestic abuse, which is rampant in the society but is scarcely taken seriously. But Amrita finds scant support—the mother and mother-in-law tell her to forget the incident, her brother shares the view and the husband is least bothered.

The only support Amrita finds is in her father. But can an average Indian homemaker who is not financially independent take such a stand and walk out of a marriage, especially when families often withdraw their support in such situations? “No, they cannot, and I feel they should not,” says Taapsee, during an interview with Outlook Money.

Talking about women who find themselves in unhappy or abusive marriages, she says:  “I will be very practical and not just talk about the emotional side of it and say that you should get out of an unhappy marriage. I feel you should be very logical because you don’t want to get out of one type of unhappiness and get into another type of unhappiness. Someone will always have the leash of your life if you are dependent—be it your partner, your family, or anyone.”

Taapsee feels as passionately for injustices against women as the characters she has played in many of her films but clearly has a practical approach towards real-life problems. She advises women to start thinking about their financial future if they haven’t already, before making such a decision. “My suggestion to women is that they should secure financial independence before getting married. Don’t reach a point when you have to divorce and then think what you will do with yourself. Be independent right from the beginning.”

Rebel With A Cause

Taapsee has been known for being upfront, her bold statements and intrepid personality, and never shies from calling out what she thinks is not right.

In an interview in 2016, she highlighted the problem of eve-teasing. “I have been touched inappropriately in DTC buses. Rubbed at wrong places while in a bus,” the Delhi girl has been quoted as saying. In a chat earlier this year, she expressed that she wouldn’t have worked in a film like Animal. She said that Hollywood movies like Gone Girl could not be compared with Indian movies. “In Hollywood, people don’t start copying actors’ hairstyles from movies (like Salaman Khan’s hairstyle in Tere Naam) or using a film’s line in real life. They also don't start stalking women after seeing it in a movie. But all this happens in our country. This is our reality ...being a star and actor gives you that soft power. And with power comes responsibility,” she reportedly said.

Taapsee with her mother Nirmaljeet Kaur Pannu. Photo: Khamakhaphotoartist, Courtesy: Spice

She has been in the eye of the storm for speaking her mind on many earlier occasions. In 2017, she seemingly criticised filmmaker K. Raghavendra Rao for his obsession with women’s midriff, according to reports. She later clarified that it was a joke on herself.

In her personal life as well, she has been no less than a rebel and has been open to taking risks, whenever required. Imagine dumping an engineering career—which is still one of the ideal choices for most of middle-class India—for modelling, against her father’s wishes.

It was a risk but she took it when she realised that she was not enjoying what she was doing. “When I was in the second year of my engineering course, I realised that I would end up doing a 9-to-5 job for the rest of my life, like my father. And here I was not being able to sit in a class for more than 3-4 hours. I had to do several extra-curricular activities to keep myself going,” she says.

The fact that she had seen her father spend that kind of life, which she thinks was mundane, added to her resolve, and led her to take the risk of leaving what could have led to a well-settled middle-class life to enter a world she was totally new to.

Her practicality helped shape her decision. “I thought if I have to do something about it, it has to be now. Because I didn’t want to look back and think that I wasted so much time of my life because I didn’t act on it (my instinct),” she says.

It was also a period of self-realisation. “I realised nobody would come and save me from myself. I realised I needed to take control of my life. I need to be my priority in my life.” She believes most women can benefit from that maxim. “The problem with most women in India is: we are not our own priority. We keep everyone else’s opinion and happiness before ours. That’s why we lose out years and years of our lives not doing something that we enjoy doing.”

If this meant fighting for her own decisions, she didn’t back out. Though her mother helped and supported her initially, they told her father only about 3-4 months after she started modelling. Even then, it was not a smooth sail convincing her father, but she stuck to her decision.

There were multiple reasons behind his reluctance to accept change. “A middle-class family living in Delhi does not have a good opinion about the glamorous world because of all the stories that come out, most of which are not ‘good’. For him, this was a dark profession,” she says.

It was also the fear of the unknown. “When there is a certain way they've been functioning over their life and when you suddenly introduce a new idea, the immediate reaction is ‘no’ or that it’s not good… the logical thinking of let’s just consider it does not come that easy to that generation.”

Initially, he thought she would leave her education mid-way as “he did not have the idea of having a part-time job”. Gradually, when he saw her managing well and associating with credible brand names, and after multiple discussions with Taapsee where she questioned him why he thinks it's not good, he came around.

Family Connection

The 33-year-old believes she is very different from her family, and in many ways she is. She is among the few women who had the courage to break the middle-class mould to carve out a career for herself that few parents are comfortable with even now.

She also considers herself very different from her parents in how she spends and saves and makes her money decisions. “I come from a heavy saving family. We are always in the saving mode. That’s the only mode I have grown to know. It was always saving before spending, which kind of didn’t fit well with my system. I have been vocal about the fact that I want to live rich and not die rich,” she says, laughing heartily.

“I had this very weird notion since my childhood days that I didn’t want to see the price tag. I want to have so much one day that I don't have to look at the price tag and I don’t want to look at the food menu right to left because when you used to have occasions of birthdays or anniversary or something, my dad used to take us out to a good restaurant but order something basic. It’s not like they didn’t have money but they were always in the saving mode… For eating, sleeping and my wellbeing, I don’t want to look at the price.”

Taapsee, who never shies away from spending on health and wellbeing, also spends on a dietician for her mother’s wellbeing. “Since they are not ready to spend extra money on their wellbeing, I do so.” A year ago, she said that she spends a fair amount on a dietician for herself and knows that her father will not approve of that.

Her parents had enough but it never seemed to be enough because they spent so little and were always saving for their children’s and the family’s future. “And now that the children are settled and don’t need their financial support anymore, they don’t know how to spend. Even now, it’s extremely difficult to make them spend.”

Taapsee’s spending habits are indeed different from her parents’, but there are learnings that she seems to have inculcated from the frugal lifestyle she saw as a child. She has managed to give a positive spin to her relationship with money by being balanced about how she spends—not compromising on her needs but at the same time not going overboard either. “I don't have a very lavish lifestyle… (it’s not like) a lot of money is going out of my pocket for pure luxury. I have fixed things that I like to spend money on, and I am very clear what I don’t want to spend on. Over the years, that has helped me build an average of how much money goes out of my account every month,” she says.

She keeps a track of how much money is left in her account, the rate at which it has increased over the years, and where and how much she invests. “I want to make sure I have a comfortable life. Now I just need to make sure that I earn this much or I have invested this much, so I can get this much return yearly to not stress about my monthly expenses. I have a realistic calculated number that I know I probably have.”

This kind of sensibility towards money management, perhaps, comes naturally to her because of the careful lifestyle of her parents. Ask any financial planner, and most of them would have stories about struggling to inculcate such money habits among some of their clients.

Though a thorough critic of her family’s money habits, her voice goes soft and her eyes shine when asked about how she funded herself through initially. She started modelling in her second year. “It was my mother. Even though she was a housewife, she saved up from the regular expenses she got for running the house and by selling Tupperware and other brands,” says Taapsee, transforming from a critic to a doting and proud daughter.

She couldn’t ask for money from her father, as she didn’t want to tell him about modelling initially, so she turned to her mother. “When I said I really want to do it, she didn't bat an eyelid before spending money. It was kind of a mother’s intuition or probably the belief that every mother has that their daughter is the most beautiful in the world. She came to the studio with me, and spent her entire savings on my first portfolio,” she says.

Fortunately, within 2-3 days, Taapsee was shooting for a brand. Initially, the payment was little, but as the money increased, the mother-daughter duo broke the news to her father, who used to manage most of the accounts for the household.

Once the income from modelling became more substantial, Taapsee started supporting herself, and that was from her college days itself. As a next step, she started supporting her younger sister financially.

“We had no background in films so she had no rule book to follow and she just managed her career on her own. I am so proud to see where she has reached today. But despite all that, at home, she has been the same person that she was when we were growing up and the relationship we share has just gotten better with time,” says her sister Shagun.

Photo: Yellow Elephant Production, Courtesy: Spice

Business Woman

From those initial days of supporting herself to taking her first steps as a businesswoman, Taapsee has come a long way. She now has a production house, Outsiders Films, for which she has teamed up with producer Pranjal Khandhdiya. She has a wedding planning company called “The Wedding Factory”, which is managed by her sister Shagun and a friend. She also owns the badminton franchise, Pune 7 Aces.

She has never considered these ventures as return-generating, long-term investments; they are rather a part of her growth journey, as a human being and as a professional. Once she became comfortable with the amount of money she was earning and was assured that “it will never be like I don’t have to eat and a place to live”, she felt it was time to look beyond. “Overall growth has to be beyond just one profession, so I started exploring other kind of fields that excite me,” she says.

The first thing she got into was the wedding planning company. However, it was more for her sister. She had just completed her graduation and internship with a company and “was looking to do something of this sort in Mumbai”, and they started thinking of something they could do together.

Taapsee saw business sense in it. “That’s one thing I felt was the safest to enter because I realised in this country this (wedding) is one thing that always happens. Even during Covid times, when it shouldn’t have happened, we were getting calls from people to get married. I realised that this is one thing that will never face recession in this country.”

Her friend in Mumbai had been working for a wedding planning company for some time and wanted to start out independently. So, Taapsee became an investor and her sister became her representative in the company.

The next thing she thought of was the sports franchise. Sports has always been close to Taapsee’s heart. “I really enjoy watching and playing sports, and I felt that if there is a sport after cricket which has gotten India laurels, it is badminton. It’s a widely played sport. So, she put her money in the domestic league version.” She doesn’t expect it to be a profit-making venture immediately because it doesn’t attract investors and sponsors like cricket does. For now, she is patient but has gone with the gut feeling that it will grow in India. “After cricket, most of the medals are coming to India in badminton,” she says.

She has also signed up a deal on tennis recently and would like to build her presence as someone who is inclined towards promoting sports. “I am still in very initial stages with badminton and tennis, but these are the things I know will never go out of my system no matter how old I get. I will never fall out of love for these.”

Then came the production company, but she never expected it to happen so soon. “Nobody (in my family) knows how a production company works. In fact, they barely know how this industry works as it is only me who is in this job.” For her, it’s important to have someone who she can trust to handle things on her behalf. But while acting, she met Pranjal, who is now a friend and a business partner, and together they launched Outsiders Films. “I trust him a lot, as much as a family member,” she says.

As of now, the company is two films old—Blurr and Dhak Dhak. In the former, Taapsee herself has played the lead. “Thankfully, we have seen so much love for our initial films. That has given us confidence that at least we have the knack of putting the right things together. The profit margins will gradually increase because sometimes this is a gamble and, there will be pluses and minuses. To start with small pluses, which we have now, even though it might not be a big turnover is good,” says Taapsee.

The plan is to first build equity with the audience, and then scale up in terms of profit, which is what they did with Dhak Dhak. “We kept our profit margins minimal because we were building our equity with the audience; we wanted them to believe in us that when we have made a film, it’s going to be worth their money. We are not going to shortsell just because it’s a female-driven story. We are not going to save money and not show you the money on screen. So, you will have that scale, and you will feel like that it’s a great film to watch.”

They are not expecting the biggest stars to associate with them right away. But Taapsee expects it to be something that will outlast her acting career. She doesn’t want to act in the films produced by herself “like other actors are doing” because “it won’t be fun being a producer then”. The excitement is such that Taapsee and Pranjal are doing things from scratch—from getting a script, getting actors attached to it, sometimes getting directors attached to it, making sure the groundwork is done, executing the film, packaging it, and delivering it to the studio. “The charm is to put everything together myself,” she says.

Like most things she does in her life, Outsiders Films also makes a statement. It is not a statement on nepotism, as it may sound to some, but to dispel the negative connotation that the word “outsiders” in the industry has. “Unfortunately, a major part of this was also coming from the ‘outsiders’ themselves… there was a lot of victimisation attached to being outsiders. Whereas I have lived my life looking at the glass half full, so when I looked at myself as an outsider, I thought: yes I have limitations but who doesn’t.”

In fact, she thinks that being an outsider and coming from a particular background hones her understanding of situations, which she is able to perform and emote with ease, and that works to her advantage. “I have had experiences which a lot of people who have been born to privileged families don’t, and that kind of gives me an edge over a lot of other people who have been born into privileged families. So, I look at it as a privilege that I am from outside and I have lived real life… I think it’s a badge of honour that I am an outsider and I am very happy and proud of it,” she says.

She says she has nothing against the people in the industry because they have their own set of struggles which are very different from hers. “I might never understand them (their struggles), but I will never undermine them. But at the same time, I will say don’t victimise me for being someone who is from outside.”

Power To Women

Just like her acting filmography, most of Taapsee’s production are also women-oriented. Dhak Dhak focuses on four women, their dreams and the journey in which they find themselves as individuals.

Is that a conscious choice? “I really don’t have to make any effort to attract these kinds of stories. I think they attract me and I attract them. I think I like those kind of scripts because I haven’t seen many of those. As a filmmaker or actor, you are always trying to pick up stuff that has not been done or seen before. (So we think) let’s try it as this might be new.”

She has never followed a formula-based life and that reflects in her work, too. “Nothing in my career has worked as per a formula. Whenever I have tried to follow a formula, it’s always given me a setback. Only when I have tried to do something out of the blue that is not expected, or which is not regular is when I have reaped the benefits of it. Films like Dhak Dhak and some others that are in the pipeline right now will all look like the ones that I would end up doing. And I didn’t want to keep my acting filmography very different from my production filmography. It should look like it’s coming from the same person.”

Photo: Khamakhaphotoartist, Courtesy: Spice

At the same time, she is looking at commercial cinema as well. Her latest, Dunki, has been the most successful for her on the box office. “That’s because I have to scale up. Playing in the safe zone sometimes makes you complacent. I have to find the right balance. When I say I want to do bigger commercial stuff that doesn’t mean I will stop doing my medium budget films, where I do something that is not conventional. Because that has eventually given me the identity I have, which makes me different from the others. So I definitely don’t want to give away that in the quest to get something bigger and commercial. But I want to increase the stakes attached to me.”

She feels once she has more audience tuned to her, thanks to her bigger projects, her medium budget films will also get a bigger chance in the bargain.

Talking about unequal pay between male and female leads, she says that’s prevalent in almost all the industries and across the globe. “This is an ongoing battle, but honestly, I feel we will not win this battle in this lifetime. But if we give up the battle, the successive generations will also not see equality. So that’s my motivation to fight this battle because I want the next generation to eventually see equality,” she says.

She has an explanation on why that happens, at least in Bollywood. “A lot of it is fuelled by the business pattern of this industry, which is like a vicious circle. Around 70 per cent of the footfall in theatres is men, and only 30 per cent women. The men watching films want to see themselves as heroes and, hence, identify themselves more with male protagonists. Unfortunately, the 30 per cent of women who come also end up celebrating the men most of the times, because that’s how they have been brought up.”

“It’s very rare that women would go and scream and whistle and cheer for a female protagonist. Most of my films with female driven content that has worked financially are those where I am playing an underdog who ends up winning the battle after hardships. I cannot play an out-an-out alpha in the beginning and end up getting seetiyan and taliyan and make a lot of money on it because that’s not what they are used to celebrating. That’s what the sad reality is.”

But she believes women-driven content is now increasing, even though most of them are made at a low budget. “It’s hardly any risk for the producer to make it because they recover everything even before they release it. And that’s because the salaries are so low.”

Would she challenge it as a producer? “Unfortunately or fortunately, whatever I have been doing as a producer, in my films, females are getting the highest paycheque because they are mostly female-driven,” she adds.

Like most other things, she has a practical approach towards this aspect too. “I can’t be that palm tree standing against a cyclone just because I believe in something and then die in the process. I have to be smart enough to manoeuvre my way through to reach out to the people I want to reach out to, to change the things I want to change. So, tomorrow, if I have to pay a man a higher salary than my female protagonist, I will, but I will also give them (women) an equal presence. That’s how I can balance it right now, but equality is very far away.”

nidhi@outlookindia.com