Taapsee Panna and Shah Rukh Khan recently worked together in Dunki and in an interview, the actor revealed that she was overwhelmed by SRK’s star power when she first worked with him. Talking about SRK’s working style, Pannu said that he likes to rehearse each scene to the point where it becomes a muscle memory. “Just like Mr. Bachchan likes to rehearse, so does Mr. SRK. He loves to rehearse every scene till he’s one with the dialogue. He’s a theatre actor who turned into a film actor, so his way of rehearsing is more like going to rehearses. He’s also a trained actor, so our methods are very different,” she said in an interview with Connect FM Canada.
Taapsee said, “I was scared because I didn’t know if I would ever get a chance like this again, so I wanted to make the best out of it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even another female actor might not get the chance to work in a commercial film like ‘Dunki’, a love story with SRK.” She admitted that she has limitations in her ability to do more than two or three takes, but in ‘Dunki’ she wanted to go beyond them. “Even though I knew my limitation was to do only two to three takes, I really wanted to go beyond it. Even if he rehearsed 50 times, I needed to have energy and fuel to keep going, and I did,” Taapsee said with a laugh. She added that she was worried about being fired from the film.
In addition, Taapsee also talked about SRK’s star power and how the first scene she filmed with him was the first one of their characters in the movie. “The first day, I was staring at him and I was so focused on my performance, because what I was seeing before my eyes was the same thing I had seen on screen for so many years.” she said.
There were times when Taapsee had to mentally “shake myself up and come back” as she realized that she couldn’t miss out on the chance to work with Dunki, and she was worried that if her performance wasn’t great, she would face a lot of criticism after the release of the movie. “It took me a bit of time to get my mind back in the present, there were a lot of times,” Taapsee said.
I don’t know if sir was aware of it or not, or even if he was, I’m glad he didn’t mention it to make me feel more embarrassed, but I got over it pretty quickly because I realized what a once-in-a-lifetime chance this was for someone like me. Dunki is currently in theaters.