Kavita Awaasthi (HINDUSTAN TIMES; February 26, 2020)

After his last two releases — Mulk (2018) and Article 15 (2019) — filmmaker Anubhav Sinha admits that a lot is riding on his latest release, the Taapsee Pannu-starrer, Thappad. Sinha points out that since his last two releases, which were thought-provoking, relevant and insightful, there are a lot of expectations from him and he is learning how to handle it. “It is scary and I don’t like pressure at all. I tell people to not take me too seriously,” he says, adding that labels like 2.0 version (of Anubhav Sinha) amuse him. “They asked me to make a sequel of Ra.One so many times that I ended up making a sequel of myself,” quips the filmmaker who directed the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer in 2011.

Talking about his experience of working with Taapsee, for the second time after Mulk, Sinha says, “When you spend time with a person, you learn more about the person, and you develop a chemistry. Of course, I know her better as an actor and as a person today, and I feel that when you know an actor better, chances are that you will deliver better results together. Taapsee is selfless and transparent as an actor. She doesn’t want you to find any Taapsee in the movie, just the character. That is charming about her.”

Thappad is a film about a woman’s self-respect, their conditioning and our society. With this film, Sinha attempts to bring forth topics like self-respect and the dignity of women and turn it into a discussion. He says, “If a film stays with you after you leave the theatre, and it leaves you with some questions about yourself and society, then that’s the maximum a film can do. What the audience does with those questions is up to them, and I have no control over that. All I can do is quietly slide in some questions into your pocket and the rest is up to the audiences and who you are.”

This year, he will have three film releases including Thappad, Abhi Toh Party Shuru Hui Hai and another one in October. “We will talk about the third one, a little later. I am enjoying this pace of working and I love making movies. I plan to keep this pace on, as long as I can, and I am not getting any younger,” he says.