Taapsee Pannu is among those artistes who pick up films that become conversation starters. The actress will now be seen playing Mithali Raj, one of India’s celebrated women cricketers, in the biopic Shabaash Mithu. In a chat with BT, Taapsee spoke about what it takes to play a woman in blue and more. Excerpts:

I am! We’ve lost touch with the feeling of having butterflies in our stomachs, the pressure of the numbers over the weekend and the audience verdict. Every film has a taker on OTT, but in a theatre, the sheer pull of the actor and the film is tested. It is nerve-wracking to be back in this position and it’s cool to be here.

I have a responsibility on my shoulders, and I had missed feeling this pressure. The audience is so used to consuming content at its own pace that bringing them out for a community-viewing experience is a big deal. We’re banking on cricket, which is loved so much in our country and this is the first time we will see a woman in blue on the screen. Having said that, nothing can be predicted.

I loved Jersey (headlined by Shahid Kapoor), but its box office result broke my heart. I can’t wrap my head around it. And yet, nothing should stop us from taking those risks. We can never get over that fear ki audience aayegi ki nahi. This is the time for the audience to show its faith and love for you. This is our reality check. The day the box office stops making me nervous, I’ll know that I’ve become indifferent towards my work and it’s time to change my job!

When the studio approached me, the film was just an idea. They needed someone who could commit time and dedication to portray someone like Mithali Raj, who has numerous achievements to her credit and stands for some extremely vital changes in our society. One had to commit time and effort to learn the sport first and then, understand the person who one was offered to emulate. I was excited to play her, but I didn’t know how challenging it would get at multiple levels. When I read and heard the script, I saw that in many places, the writer had mentioned Taapsee instead of Mithali. The script was written keeping me in mind, which doesn’t happen with all the scripts. Things like these kept encouraging me to push myself harder for this challenging part.

Yes, in a good way. I used to train for eight hours on the pitch. It would exhaust me, but that didn’t stop me. I didn’t want to play the sport badly or incorrectly on screen. In a country like ours, there is a weird notion about women cricketers that they don’t play as well or their game is not as impressive. It constantly played on my mind that no one should step out of the cinema hall and say things like, ‘Female cricket pe film hai na, toh itni exciting nahi hai.’ I pushed myself as hard as I could. Srijit sir (Srijit Mukherjee, director) would make me go through numerous retakes till I hit a four or a six as required. Cricketers and Mithali’s contemporaries Devika Palshikar and Nooshin Khadeer and physical therapist Akanksha Satyavanshi, who is also the physio for the current women’s team, helped me in a big way to understand Mithali as a person and as a sportsperson. They’ve all been with Mithali for years.

She was at the peak of her games when we were shooting, so we would only converse on messages and exchange notes.

Mithali and I are like chalk and cheese. She doesn’t talk much and is less expressive verbally. She’s an observer more than a talker. Generally, biopics have some typical tropes to depict a winner’s sentiment or something heroic — like high-energy shots, some kind of chest-thumping, jump in the air. Here, we had to depict a winner who has led a heroic journey but is not overtly expressive. In many of her clips, I’ve just seen her smiling. I wondered how we would do this and would people accept this. Many of us, including me, woke up to Mithali and her journey very late in the day. We had to take some liberty to bring her emotions out on the big screen without going overboard. She’s had a supportive family, she’s led India from the front, she’s fought several battles to get this far. I needed to understand her as a person while playing her. Mimicking is not how you depict someone. You won’t find accented Hindi in the film though Mithali is from a Tamil family, residing in Hyderabad. Her Hindi is neutral and accent-free. When Mithali gave the trailer a thumbs-up, I was relieved.

Shabaash Mithu also focusses on the gender bias in the sport, which sportspersons like Mithali Raj have tried to address and change in India... The tag of Gentleman’s Game and the fact that we, including me, didn’t know much about Mithali, the women’s team and their journey till the 2017 World Cup finals is something to think about. There’s a line in the trailer where Mithali is asked who her favourite male cricketer is. The way she tackled that in real life stayed with me. As an actress, I have been asked several times which male co-star I would like to team up with. I am not sure how many male colleagues have been asked the same question about a female co-star. I guess the female actor is immaterial, no? It’s this thinking across fields that we have to change.

I’ve been a cricket fan from childhood, but I started following women’s cricket very late in the day. We also treat the men’s team very differently from the women’s team. The conditions in which they’ve played and come this far have been challenging. From leftover jerseys and kits to a pay packet for the national team that equals a men’s domestic team — there’s a lot that Mithali and her contemporaries have fought and continue to fight. The stories of their struggle make me cry. It hasn’t been easy for girls to choose a sport and that, too, cricket as a career. It’s a vicious circle here; basics nahi hain, toh game utna accha kaise hoga, nahi hoga toh audience nahi hogi, audience nahi hai toh…it goes on and rolls right back to where the argument started. It took Mithali 23 years to put a foot in the door. Today, there are younger players and things are slowly changing.