Fresh off Gandhari's run on Netflix, the actor tells Bollywood Hungama their fourth collaboration will try to bend genre expectations even further.
Taapsee Pannu isn't interested in repeating a winning formula. In an exclusive conversation with Bollywood Hungama, the actor said the success of Gandhari has only made her want to go further with writer Kanika Dhillon, not settle into what already worked.
This is their third Netflix outing together, and by Taapsee's account, the partnership runs on a specific kind of trust. She credits Dhillon with cracking something particular to streaming: the audience's finger on the pause button.
"I believe Kanika has kind of figured out the knack of how to keep the OTT audiences engaged," Taapsee said. She went on to describe why that's harder than it sounds. "Because OTT kind of you are fighting against that pause button that can happen any time, it is unlike theatre experience where you participate and you sit in that dark room, your full focus is on the screen," she explained.
That distinction, between a viewer locked into a dark hall and one scrolling with a remote in hand, is clearly something Taapsee thinks about a lot. It shapes how she approaches her own job on these projects too. Her part of the deal, she says, is to hand over control on structure and trust Dhillon to land the story.
"All I do is kind of like take that leap of faith with her, trust that, you know, she knows how to take the film till the end in the most the best possible way and have to just believe in her," she said.
With Gandhari now added to a run of collaborations that's clearly working, Taapsee frames the moment as use, not a reason to play safe. "Here definitely it is a big confidence boost for Kanika and me to collaborate again together to now this time, you know try to push the envelope even more to take bigger risks to kind of present something new yet another time, bend the genre at yet another time," she said.
Ask her what actually defines the Taapsee-Dhillon partnership and she doesn't reach for a genre label. She reaches for the absence of one. "We might not fit any kind of typical framework… because there is no rules that we abide by with the films that we do," she said.
No project has been named yet. No streamer, no title, no timeline. What's on record is intent, an actor and a writer three films deep into something that keeps finding an audience, and neither one in a hurry to explain what they'll do the same way twice. Whatever comes next, expect it to look nothing like Gandhari.
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