Suraj’s new stint
After Life of Pi, actor Suraj Sharma is now playing a medical student on Homeland
Life of Pi actor Suraj Sharma has now moved onto television with the fourth season of renowned series Homeland. He speaks about life after Ang Lee, what the series has been like and more.
QWhat’s the name of your character? A brief description of your character? I play Aayan Ibrahim, a medical student, from a village, but who has moved to a city. He is smart, works hard, and is a good person, caught in a very bad situation. Aayan is running away from the situation or trying to survive, because essentially, he doesn’t have control over it. You see that there is more to this than simply political views and religion… It’s got a lot to do with familial bonds.
QWhat’s the biggest challenge of joining Homeland at season 4? For me firstly, this is the first TV show that I’m doing. The shooting process is completely different from a movie because you have a vague outline of what’s going to happen but you don’t know.
QWhat was the most challenging part of playing Aayan? I think the hardest thing for me is simply imagining a situation wherein there is this constant strife; you are part of it because of your family, and there is this continuous threat through the drones. And imagining what it would be to live with that and get to a point where you don’t notice it anymore, encountering danger all the time — that’s the hardest part.
QHow is television and film different for you? When you read a script of a movie you know what’s going to happen at the end; Here, I have no idea. Being alive in that situation and not knowing what’s going to happen, is strange to cope with. You don’t know what’s coming at you, so you’re continuously active and shot like that (snaps).
QHow is Cape Town treating you? Cape Town is beautiful. I don’t want to leave, really! I want to do much more here. It’s outside of Cape Town that’s really it, you know? I want to come back to South Africa.
QDo you have anything else planned, in the pipeline after Homeland? I’m studying film at NYU. I’m learning and hopefully, I’ll write and direct. I have nothing lined up yet.
How has India responded to your success? Well, they responded to the movie really well.
QHave you got offers from Bollywood? It’s hard to break into Bollywood simply because of the way it’s set up. All the producers, everything that holds power and money, is built around connections mostly.
QWell once you’ve worked with Ang Lee you’ve got a great calling card. Yeah, definitely. I got very lucky. That one thing set me up for a lot and helped me and brought me somewhere I would not have been. But from this point on it’s not like something is written in stone for me. Appearance-wise, I’m not what an Indian actor would be like. I’m aware of that. With Hollywood, the number of roles you get as an Indian actor which are not stereotypical? Very small.