‘I’m ready to take risks on any platform’
Nawazuddin Siddiqui has mostly chosen the path less taken; so when the actor decided to take the web route at a time when his film career was thriving, it didn’t come as a surprise. In fact, everyone looked forward to what new he would bring to the table. And Nawazuddin lived up to everyone’s expectations in the way he breathed life into the layered gangster’s role in Sacred Games. The response around it, in the actor’s own words, “has been encouraging” and so, he plans to continue his web rendezvous and balance it with his film career. Excerpts:
What’s the reason behind your inclination towards web as a medium? As an actor, I will continue to do different things, break my image, and play layered characters. And it does not matter which medium is giving me the liberty to do so. It’s just that I feel right now web is the medium that allows art the required breathing space. Characters and their journey through the narrative can be best explored in the medium. A character like Ganesh Gaitonde would not have grown the way it did on the web. People would not have accepted his intensity and let him take so much time to come out in his full form on the big screen. So would you choose to do more work on the web as compared to films? That’s not how I look at it. At the same time, I won’t say that I am trying to strike a balance. As an artist, there is no limitation when it comes to doing work in any medium. I am ready to take risks on any platform, just that the character needs to have that spark and the worth. With Sacred Games 2 coming up, what more can one expect from your character? You don’t get to play characters like Ganesh Gaitonde every day. There is so much left in him. Uske personality ke bahut saare aise bhi aspects hain jo abhi bhi bahar aana baki hain, aur uski hi jhalak season 2 mein dekhne ko milegi. This takes me back to the time when I started working on the show and felt so good with the kind of approach Netflix has towards such shows. Also, such characters demands a lot out of you so at times it becomes difficult to dissociate. I portrayed the character with a lot of honesty, and once done I move on with equal amount of honesty. What is your opinion about censorship on the web? That isn’t a good idea. But then freedom can’t be misused. Agar hum aise soch ke show ya film banayenge ki ‘chalo bold content rakhte hain toh chal jayega’, that’s a completely wrong approach. We can’t make semi-porn content in the name of bold content. The idea is to experiment, create something worthy, and not destroy it. It’s our responsibility to self censor before going ahead with an idea, we can’t compromise on aesthetics.