For an actor who had relatively few lines in Dhurandhar, Saumya Tandon found herself at the centre of one of the franchise’s most discussed moments. As Ulfath Rehman, the wife of Rehman Dakait (Akshaye Khanna), she portrayed much of the character’s grief, anger and resilience through silence rather than dialogue — a challenge she later revisited in Dhurandhar 2 The Revenge.

Ironically, what audiences remember most are the slaps. When told she has earned the unofficial title of Bollywood’s newest “Thappad Queen”, Saumya laughs and says, “I’ll take that as a compliment. But those scenes were never really about the slap. There was so much happening underneath — the emotions, the conflict, the pain. They were actually among the most difficult scenes I’ve done.”

She reveals that the physical action may have lasted only a moment, but the emotional build-up required far more work. “People remember the thappad, but for me it was everything before and after it. Har kisi ko thappad nahi milta hai... you should be privileged to get my thappad,” she adds.

One of those scenes involved Ranveer Singh and talking about that Saumya shares, “I really didn’t want to slap him. I kept hoping there would be some camera trick. But he kept saying, ‘Go for it.’ Finally, he picked up my hand and said, ‘Maar de.’ After that, there was no escaping it.”

Away from the intense world of Dhurandhar, Saumya is now looking ahead to a very different project with filmmaker Sooraj Barjatya. The shift, she says, is part of a conscious effort to avoid being boxed into one kind of role.

“People have seen me in cheerful, bubbly characters. Then they saw me in a much more intense space. As an actor, I feel there is still a lot left to explore. I really want to do a romance film. I hope I get to play many different shades and keep surprising people,” she says.