Trolls, with their short-sightedness, may not be able to see beyond Taapsee Pannu’s so-called “masculine” frame in Rashmi Rocket. But it’s evident that the actor has put blood, sweat and tears into her transformation as an on-screen athlete. With the Akarsh Khurana-directed film going on floors in November 2020, Pannu had to kick off her training at least two months before. She reveals that she juggled the intensive training with the shoot of Vinil Mathew’s murder mystery, Haseen Dillruba.

“During the entire schedule of Haseen Dillruba in Haridwar, I used to wake up at 5 am. It would be cold, almost 7 degrees. I used to go for a run on the track, come back, shoot from 9 am to 9 pm, and sleep at 10 pm, [only to] wake up at 5 am the next day for a run. I had to repeat that cycle every day. I used to get an Army-wali feeling while following that process,” laughs Pannu, surprised at how she balanced the two dramatically different projects together.

The actor closely worked with her fitness army — gym coach Sujeet Kargutkar, athletic coach Melwyn Crasto, physiotherapist Prachi Shah and nutritionist Munmun Ganeriwal — to achieve the mesomorphic body type associated with sprinters. “My life has changed completely [due to the regimen], right from my body clock to [what] I eat now and how my body reacts,” says the actor, who plays a sprinter in the ZEE5 drama that revolves around gender testing in Indian sports.