How Taapsee Pannu Transformed For Her Role In Rashmi Rocket

Taapsee Pannu shared this photo. (Image courtesy: taapsee)

Taapsee Pannu, on Friday, shared a detailed video featuring her journey of major physical transformation for her new film Rashmi Rocket on social media, as she promised to her fans earlier this week. The video features snippets of Taapsee from the sets of the film, racing tracks, as well as from gym, where she spent hours to get a perfect physique for her role as a sprinter in the film. In the clip, also featuring pictures from the actress' childhood when she won several medals for winning racing competitions in her school, Taapsee 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."

"When I started preparing for Rashmi Rocket, it almost felt like a deja vu. I was back at the starting line, looking at the finish line and thinking that yeas, I can do it again. In my first meeting with my trainers, I told them thumb rule - no steroids. I wanted to build my body very naturally, in a very believable way...there were lot of challenges, there are 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 myself," she added.

Taapsee also said: "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. 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 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. For this film, I needed to hit the gym, and hit the gym read bad! 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 20 kgs 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 third day of 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, just 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 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. It took me almost two weeks to bearable pain when I start sprinting," she said in the clip.

The actress also shared that when she started training for the film, she "didn't have any reference to look up to," she only had the real sprinter as her reference. Taapsee's nutritionist Munmun Ganeriwal said that the actress only had homemade meals during her training.

Watch Taapsee Pannu's Rashmi Rocket journey here:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taapsee Pannu (@taapsee)

Taapsee Pannu plays the role of a sprinter named Rashmi in the film, directed by Akarsh Khurana and co-produced by Ronnie Screwvala, Neha Anand and Pranjal Khandhdiya.