Indian actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui loves characters with ‘evil’ in them – The Frontier Post

(Web Desk): It is his chameleonic ability that sets Nawazuddin Siddiqui apart from his peers. While an actor has to be able to portray his character, Siddiqui tends to get into his skin, creating a being that is all too real.

It is this quality that made him so successful, with roles as a vengeful gangster in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), a deranged serial killer in Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016) and criminal overlord Ganesh Gaitonde in Sacred Games.

In his latest film, Rautu Ka Raaz, Siddiqui plays the role of a smart cop in the sleepy town of Rautu ki Beli, somewhere in Uttarakhand, where nothing much seems to happen.

Until the murder happened.

When the director of a mountain school for the blind is found dead in her bedroom, the town experiences its first murder in, well, living memory.

Siddiqui, who plays Negi, an inspector with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), must try to find the culprit. Suspects seem to be everywhere and Negi must deal not only with the whirlpool that is his mind but also with the ignorance of his subordinates.

“I think it’s a very different kind of film. See, most murder mysteries have the same pace and violence and all that. But in our film, we have a very slow pace because of the village (which is so relaxed),” says Siddiqui.

A strange character

He adds that the appeal of the character was his “weirdness.” “He’s not a typical guy. What’s the weirdest thing about him? He doesn’t like typical things. He was a very careless character. (It wasn’t until he started investigating that he slowly became interested in the case.) Other than that, he’s a laid-back type of person.”

How did he get into the role? He emphasizes that while everyone has trauma, it’s not easy to use it for a role. “Everyone has trauma in their life, but to dwell on it is to invite a disease — it’s better (to believe) that yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery and today is the gift.”

Instead of self-reflection, he believes in exposure to people to help him channel a certain way of being. “I think actors have to be very aware of people; listen to people, interact with people, regular people. Because when you play a character, you get to know the reference. What happens is that if that experience is not real life experience, you can only come up with a character from movies. Especially when actors get established, they lose touch with the real world. I feel like the more I connect with people, the more they enrich me,” he explains.

Complexity is the key

Like most actors who love their craft, Siddiqui is not interested in playing two-dimensional, flat characters. “I like all the characters, but there are a few characters that I don’t like (to play). Those are the one-shadow characters, which are very good. Okay. I don’t like those characters who don’t have any evil in them, to be honest,” he says dryly.

And while he has had many versatile roles on the big screen, there are still a number of films he would have loved to work in. These include Sparsh, starring Naseeruddin Shah as a blind man, and Pushpak, the modern-day Bollywood version of Prince and the Pauper.

As he relishes his return to Zee5Global in Rautu Ka Raaz after his stint in the 2023 film Haddi, Siddiqui recalls his time in the village during the shoot. “Everyone was so welcoming. And even though I’m not much of an eater, I did eat a lot of Maggi (noodles) and paneer (curd) during the shoot,” he says.