'Was Seen As A Southwali Heroine', Taapsee Pannu Talks About Breaking Language Barriers

With the success of films like Pushpa: The Rise, KGF, and RRR, there is a lot of talk going on about pan-India films and their success. The debate went to a whole different level when some celebrities spoke on the matter and while one side was arguing about the importance of Hindi, the other was talking about how it is not our national language and all languages must be respected and loved.?

Taapsee Pannu,?in conversation with?ETimes, talked about how for her, language barriers were broken early on in her career.

Instagram/TaapseePannu

Taapsee Pannu said that at the time of the release of her Bollywood debut, she was referred to as 'Southwali heroine'. Taapsee began her career with South films and made a transition to Bollywood with David Dhawan's Chashme Buddoor.

She said, "When my first Bollywood film Chashme Buddoor released, I was seen as a Southwali heroine. That was my first reference for people. A lot of PR professionals would tell me those days to wash this image off, saying that if I don’t do that, the audience here won’t embrace me. I wouldn’t understand their logic. They would tell me that Sridevi’s acceptance across industries was a rarity.?

"But I didn’t ever stop working down South. The frequency of the projects reduced, but I never left those films entirely. In fact, my Hindi film repertoire began to change the kind of films I started doing in the South industries. I began to choose movies that motivated me, even if they didn’t pay me big bucks. I wanted to be language agnostic. For me, language barriers were broken right at the beginning of my career."

Instagram/TaapseePannu

The actress further added that her entry to Bollywood wasn't instant. She said that the Hindi belt was not aware of her work in the south and she had to start like a struggling newcomer.?

She said, "Back then, I wasn’t embraced instantly in Bollywood. The Hindi speaking belt was not aware of my body of work there. I had to start from scratch, like a struggling newcomer, even when I was a dozen films old with good work on my CV. I didn’t get treated like I was a star who came from there. I used to wonder why that happened to me? Why was that respect not being given to me here??

"In the beginning, I thought it was unfair, but there was no other precedent for things being better at that time. It’s only with OTT, and the way releases are being planned as pan-India films that people are waking up to the stardom of actors from other industries. If I had crossed over now, I would not have had to do seven-minute roles to get noticed. Things would have been different."

?Taapsee will next be seen in Mithali Raj biopic titled Shaabash Mithu.

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