Ten years on, Taapsee Pannu remembers the exact moment she decided Pink was hers to do. Not asked for. Claimed.

The actor has been speaking about the 2016 Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury film as it hits its tenth year, and the story she tells is less about audition nerves and more about certainty. "I very authoritatively said, 'Only I will do this film now'," she recalled. "And the rest is in front of you."

Context matters here. Pink came right after Baby, and Taapsee has spoken about the weight that followed a film people actually noticed. "There was so much versatility in the characters I played that people were always curious about what I would take up next," she said, adding that whatever came after Baby had to top it. So when the Pink script landed, set in Delhi, about a woman named Minal Arora and the assumptions made about her, it didn't take long to decide.

What's interesting is how the offer arrived. The makers didn't just cast her, they checked with her first, asking whether she thought a film like this should even be made. Her answer was immediate. "Being a girl from Delhi, I genuinely wondered why nobody was making a film about an issue like this," she said. "So when they asked me, I said, 'Yes, why not?'"

Pink went on to do more than launch a hashtag-friendly conversation about consent. It sat Amitabh Bachchan opposite a cast of younger actors, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang among them, and turned into one of the more quietly influential Hindi films of its decade. Minal became the character most people associate with Taapsee before her action-thriller run even began.

The anniversary hasn't been without a wrinkle. Taapsee had to respond earlier this year to Kirti Kulhari's comment about feeling sidelined during Pink's promotional run, saying she "can't discard" her co-star's feelings, a reminder that a film remembered fondly by audiences doesn't always sit the same way with everyone who made it.

Minal, though, remains the reference point people go back to. Taapsee's newer work keeps circling similar territory. In the Netflix film Gandhari, she plays Bani, a mother hunting for her kidnapped daughter, a role reportedly pulling numbers across more than 70 countries.

From Minal to Bani is a decade's worth of choosing characters carrying something heavier than the scene they're in. Whether her next role keeps that streak going is the only real question left hanging over this anniversary.