“I was feeling Claustrophobic and Suffocated”: Taapsee Pannu talks about her Challenge in Thappad

Taapsee Pannu is quite the boss lady, right from her professional choices to her personal life. Be it delivering powerful messages through her movies, to voicing her bold opinion, she aces it all. The actress has undeniably carved a niche for herself with movies like Pink, Naam Shabana, Soorma, Mulk, Badla, Game Over and the list goes on and on.

After highlighting issues of women's safety, Taapsee is all set to shed light on domestic violence with her upcoming film Thappad. Directed by Anubhav Sinha, the film is about a woman who files for divorce when her husband slaps her.

In a recent interview, Taapsee states that there is nothing like a slap out of love.  "The fact is, whether it is one slap or several more slaps or other acts of domestic violence, it all comes from a place of disrespect and discrimination. There is nothing called a slap out of love. No, never!"

While talking to IANS, she said “I think no one takes a stand against the disrespect of women, including women themselves. Standing up against it is the need of the hour. Women who are living in poor economic conditions cannot stand up because of their conditioning and financial dependency on their spouses. They have no place to go and they do not earn money, so they deal with disrespect and torture every day. In elite society, they refuse to address the issue only because they look at it as a social embarrassment and (feel that) it hampers their image of a perfect family!"

Taapsee also explains how the violence commences right from childhood as she says: "A kid is slapped by an elder because of the elder wants to create fear in the child's mind, because the child is comparatively weak. It is the wrong style of parenting. Since childhood, the human mind learns to normalize a few acts of physical violence like slapping or raising a hand. In adulthood, men especially use the same habits to control people. It is a cycle and we need to question it.”

Besides, the actress also reveals how challenging it was for her to play ‘Amrita’, her character in Thappad. "The character Amrita was suffocating for me in the end and I took it as a challenge. After 15 days of shooting, I started feeling claustrophobic. It was tough for me to get out of my firebrand image and mind space and get into the skin of this character," she shares.

Talking about her character in the film, Taapsee said, "She took all the typical nonsense of ‘girls should compromise', ‘little physical violence is part of love', ‘and girl should do everything to save the marriage'. As Taapsee, I cannot take such no-sense at all. So, emotionally I was feeling claustrophobic.”

Thappad is scheduled to be released on February 28, 2020.