Mrunal Thakur is confident in her skin and that comes across every time I speak to her. With her big-ticket film Toofaan — co-starring Farhan Akhtar — premiering on Amazon Prime Video this Friday, Mrunal chatted with t2 over a Zoom call on being the strong and supportive Ananya in the Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra film and why she is ready to play any part as long as she gets to be versatile.

From the trailer, Ananya seems to be a very strong and important character in Toofaan...

Yes, and that’s what my friends and family have been saying to me ever since they saw the trailer. They felt that they were not watching Ananya, they were watching Mrunal. My industry friends are happy to see a female character getting equal footing as the male character and that I am getting to work with a director like Rakeysh (Omprakash Mehra) sir so early in my career. It’s every actor’s dream, and they have all told me, ‘Mrunal, we are very jealous of you!’(Laughs) Everyone has also loved the song Ananya.... There are very few female characters in our films who get a song based on their name.

In what ways is Ananya similar to Mrunal?

She’s confident, she’s independent... There is a lot of pain in her life, and I thought up a backstory for Ananya, which wasn’t written anywhere. Before I started playing her, I asked myself, ‘Ananya ka childhood kaisa hoga?’

There was so much pain in her life that she decided to channelise it positively and that’s possibly why she became a doctor. She may have the opportunities to travel the globe and work in better hospitals, but she chooses to work in Dongri in Mumbai where Ajju (aka Aziz, played by Farhan Akhtar) lives... Ajju is a small-time gangster who beats up people, who extorts money... she tries to rehabilitate people like him.

For Ajju, Ananya is not just a support system. Every house, I feel, has someone like Ananya who holds everyone together and motivates them. A lot of us never say ‘Thank you’ to our support systems. I am grateful to Rakeysh sir for giving me this role because it’s really strong and she’s not the typical Bollywood girlfriend giving support to her man. The audience wants to see a woman who is confident. Ananya is also very liberal and she’s close to my heart because after playing her, I feel even more empowered and inspired. I have become stronger, I feel.

Do you prepare backstories for all the characters that you play like you did for Ananya?

You can say that. I need clarity on all my characters. On set, I would ask Farhan and my other co-actors, ‘How do you think Ananya and Aziz met?’ ‘What would their childhood have been like?’ And the answers that came forth were very interesting.

Ananya is an amalgamation of what Rakeysh sir thought, what the writers thought, what I thought.... I would also give credit to my mother because the character traits that Ananya has... I see a lot of my mom in her, I see myself in her.

So is there a storyteller in you somewhere in the future?

I would love, love, love to be a director. Sometimes when I am watching something, I really get mesmerised by the shot-taking, the way the emotions are framed.... Most of what you see on my social media — editing, putting pictures or videos together — is my work (smiles). A friend of mine keeps telling me, ‘Mrunal, I think you will make a great director’. Thanks to all my directors for planting that seed in my head that enables me to see myself as a director, maybe a few years down the line. I am looking forward to that journey as well.

Mrunal Thakur with Farhan Akhtar in Toofaan Sourced by the correspondent

What was it like having Farhan as a co-actor as well as a film-maker who you could potentially learn so much from?

The beauty of being on a Rakeysh Mehra set is that we don’t do too much in terms of rehearsing lines. He believes that if you rehearse your lines too much, you lose the charm and spontaneity that’s present in those lines. You know what your co-actor is going to say and that kills the element of surprise and spontaneity.

Farhan and I would discuss our characters and their milieu and he would share with me what he feels Ananya could be like. He always kept helping me and he would understood the position I was in because there were moments when I would feel nervous and confused. The beauty about Farhan is that whenever he would gauge that I was feeling low about my performance in a shot, the director in him would keep motivating me and guiding me.

Farhan is also a great human being. He knows how to make someone comfortable. It was overwhelming for me to be on the same set as him, Pareshji (Rawal) and Mohan Agashe... they come with tremendous amount of experience. It was then that Farhan told me, ‘Mrunal, you have it in you. You just need to be confident about your capability’. In the film, Ananya keeps motivating Ajju. On set, it was the other way around (laughs).

Toofaan now and then Jersey towards the end of the year. Is it sheer coincidence that you are starring in two back-to-back sports movies?

I believe in destiny and I believe in opportunity. And I have dreamt of being on a movie set ever since I was a kid. Every time an opportunity comes to me, my first lookout is what the story is all about. I keep asking myself, ‘How can I be versatile? How can I make this part different from what I have played before?’ Although the base of Toofaan and Jersey (co-starring Shahid Kapoor) may seem the same, that is sport, the reason why I wanted to be a part of Jersey is because what I get to do in that film is very different from Toofaan. The two films can’t be compared at all, except that both are sports dramas. As an actor, I want to be on a movie set where I can learn a lot and that I can look up to the people who are associated with the film I am doing.

Your career trajectory has been pretty interesting, moving from TV to debuting in films with a big international production like Love Sonia and then signing on big Bollywood like Super 30 and Batla House. What’s the plan?

I think I have just manifested all this for myself! (Laughs) I started with Love Sonia and for a director like Tabrez Noorani to put such faith in me and give me the titular role was a big deal, especially in what was a big Hollywood production (co-starring Demi Moore). I quickly realised that for me this journey is about experience and growth. What I learnt in this journey is that jitni jaldi upar jaate hain utni jaldi neechey bhi girte hain. That’s why I want to take it slow, I want to enjoy this journey, I want to work with the best talent in India and outside the country....

Things are changing. A lot of my contemporaries give up parts because the screen space is less or it’s a mother or sister’s role... I don’t have those inhibitions. My dream is to be in front of the camera, whatever the role or the medium. The only bug in my head is that I want to be known as a versatile actor. I want to break the cliched, stereotyped thinking that only a girl with long hair can be the heroine. No, she can have short hair also. My mother became a mother when she was 18... so why can’t I play a mother on screen at age 28?! Actresses think if they play a mother on screen, they age in the minds of the audience. Actresses like Meryl Streep and Vidya Balan have proved that’s not the case. They simply mesmerise you with their screen presence. I am happy that audiences are now getting smarter.

Have you always been this self-assured and confident?

There have been so many times when I have been under-confident. People told me that out of sight is out of mind because my last film released in 2019. And now my movies are going to release back to back and speak for themselves. I was asked why I debuted with a deglam role in Love Sonia. But is life about being a glamorous actress? No. And I am happy to say that Toofaan is going to change things for me as an actor.