Taapsee Pannu's latest movie “Rashmi Rocket” would release on October 10 and the trailer of the same was released on Thursday (September 23). Rashmi is described as a "champion who runs for justice" and "challenges the laws of a nation" in the trailer.
The film would be released on the OTT platform – ZEE5. In the film, Taapsee is featured as Rashmi – a female athlete, who fits with society, law and becomes a professional sprinter.
Rashmi Rocket showed the struggle of every female in the country. And to do justice with her role in the film Bollywood actress transformed herself. A few months back she shared her transformation journey on social media, as she promised to her fans, through a video. The video featured snippets of Taapsee from the sets of the film, racing tracks, as well as from the gym, where she spent hours to get a perfect physique for her role as a sprinter in the film.
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Taapsee started the 8-minute-video with her childhood memory when she ended up winning a medal on every sports day. She can be heard saying, “I think I was 6 years old when I ran for the first time in my first standard. And I won and from there onwards, every year, on sports day, I used to run. I ended up winning a medal every time I ran.”
She continued and said, “When I started preparing for Rashmi Rocket, it almost felt like a déjà vu. I was back at the starting line, looking at the finish line and thinking that yes, I can do it again. In my first meeting with my trainers, I told them the thumb rule – no steroids. I wanted to build my body very naturally, in a very real and believable way.”
“There were a lot of challenges, there are a lot of challenges, being a female-driven film, there aren't budget allocated, at least not as much as you get for these sports big skills films, we didn't have those budget so we decided to make it real and to work on me also I didn't have the liberty being a female actor to sit at home for a year while I build my body and get ready,” she added.
“I had to do other films simultaneously so I was shooting for multiple other films while I was daily training for Rashmi Rocket. Two hours of rigorous training, going into of 12-14 hours shift of shooting and coming back home, sleeping, getting up and doing the same thing again. I have never been a gym person, not gone to gyms that often as I believed in-home training. For this film, I needed to hit the gym, and hit the gym read bad! I remember in starting Surjeet said how will we train a girl, like a sprinter, who hasn’t hit the gym,” she added.
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She further said, “It took me close to a month to start lifting serious weights. In the beginning, it was long warm-ups and from there onwards to eventually lifting over 200 kilograms on head squat was something I never thought I will be able to do.”
“Things were going smooth and effortlessly when I started shooting for Rashmi Rocket and on the third day of the shoot, I think my body couldn't take it anymore. I just couldn't run anymore. Halfway through the sprint, I stopped, I couldn't lift my legs. I had to stop the shoot for a while and go to physio just to be able to walk. That day was very scary for the entire set... I was scared, obviously. Usually, I feel that I can brave up the situation and say that ‘okay, I can handle it.’ But at that moment, I had a question mark in my mind, which was very scary. It was painful. Every time I used to lift my leg, it used to hurt and that's not how you can shoot an athletic film. My trainers were confident and it took me almost two weeks to bearable pain when I start sprinting,” said Taapsee.
She then said, “The benchmark was very high as we don’t have a reference of any actress so we have to work and build a body like an original athlete.”
She concluded, “For the longest time, people told me that I am ordinary and I am ordinary but if the transformation is possible then I believe ordinary people are meant to do extraordinary things.”
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You can watch the transformation video here:
The film is directed by Akarsh Khurana and co-produced by Ronnie Screwvala, Neha Anand and Pranjal Khandhdiya. Rashmi Rocket’s cast also includes Priyanshu Painyuli, Abhishek Banerjee and Supriya Pathak.
Rashmi Rocket isn’t a film on any particular athlete but it does remind me about Dutee Chand, who is the first Indian to win a gold medal in a 100m race in a global competition. But in the year 2014, she was banned by Commonwealth Games the Athletic Federation of India stated that hyperandrogenism made her ineligible to compete as a female athlete, following this she was banned to perform in Asian Games as well. But she returned with a bang and won two silver medals at the 2018 Asian Games.