EXCLUSIVE: Zakir Hussain on his underworld show Murshid, ‘We didn’t glorify the characters’ : Bollywood News

ZEE5’s upcoming web series Murshid will see veteran actor Kay Kay Menon in the title role of an underworld don. Zakir Hussain, another seasoned actor, will play his arch nemesis. The show is directed by Shravan Tiwari and also stars Tanuj Virvani and Rajesh Shringarpure in lead roles. It tells the story of Menon and Hussain’s characters who are forced to take up arms after ‘retiring’ from the underworld.

EXCLUSIVE: Zakir Hussain on his underworld show Murshid: “We didn’t glorify the characters”

Mumbai has an underworld history and part of Murshid’s story also takes place 20 years ago. In an exclusive chat with Bollywood-HongamaZakir Hussain answered whether the story is inspired by a real underworld event from Mumbai’s history. He said, “Not exactly. I don’t think so. This is a fictional story based on Mumbai’s history. I feel we have seen so many stories based on the underworld, and I have acted in some of them. So this is a fictional story like them.”

Menon’s Murshid and Hussain’s Farid are at odds in the show. “There comes a point where they clash,” he said. “The story is such that something happens to them on a personal level, and they are forced to pick up guns again after they retire.”

Sharing about the past of their respective characters, Hussain added, “So, Farid was once Murshid’s partner. Murshid just fed him. Murshid was supposed to be a senior in that arena. Then, as we know in many stories, the lust for power kicks in and one person becomes bigger than the other and vice versa. Then the man (Farid) goes against his own guru.”

Hussain admitted that there have been many stories about the underworld in the past few decades. He said that the novelty in the show is in the way the story is presented. “The characters are people from our environment, but we have not glorified them,” he said. “We know that these kinds of people exist in our society. They survive and do their work by being part of the system and also by being against it. So, this is about this nexus between the underworld and politics. We have tried to show how they grow their nexus, come out of it and are later forced to return to it.”

In real life, Hussain and Menon are different from their on-screen characters in Murshid. “We are very old friends. We know and understand each other. We see each other’s work and we have worked together as well. So there are no problems in working together. You know what is coming from the other side and things get done easily,” he said.

When asked what he looks for in a project before saying yes, Zakir Hussain recalled a funny incident with Ram Gopal Varma before the release of Sarkarthe first film that caught his attention. “When I started around SarkarI asked RGV what I should do now. He said, ‘Don’t do anything. Let this film come out.’ After the release, I asked him the same. He said, ‘Do some work, what else?’ (laughs) He said I should do films with a good director, production and role. So there’s not much in it (criteria for selecting projects). It’s very rare that I don’t like to take up a project,” he said.

Hussain admitted that he continued to get a lot of negative characters after that, maybe because of his personality. But he is thankful to Rajkumar Santoshi for breaking the shackles for him. “Rajkumar Santoshi sahab also gave me a villain role, but it was also comical in Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani. Then people found out that I can do comedy too, so I started getting comedy roles. So I just see if it’s interesting and then try to do it differently. Other than that, I’m not picky,” he said.

Murshid will be available to stream on ZEE5 from August 30.

Also Read: Murshid Trailer: Kay Kay Menon is all set to unleash hell in this ZEE5 original web series on Mumbai mafia

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