Actor Iqbal Khan, who continues to make waves with his performances to date, gets candid with The Pioneer about working on OTT platforms, the success of the Crackdown franchise, and more.
Tejal Sinha
An actor who has made sure his work proves his versatility is none other than Iqbal Khan. And why not? Be it romantic or action, one surely knows he can ace it all with immense grace. If you’ve been following him since the beginning, you’d know how, after being a popular television personality, he went on to try his luck in films but unfortunately didn’t get the much-deserved recognition. However, with the boom of OTT over the past years, it seems like now the Unforgettable actor has been on the verge of becoming an actor who can ace the art irrespective of any medium. For instance, one may look at his performance in the Crackdown franchise. As down-to-earth of a person as he is, he believes, “Over the years, my experience has taught me that a particular medium will not satisfy you more or less because wherever you get good work, that is where you’ll feel more satisfied. However, having said that OTT is one such medium where you have maximum creative freedom, you get to experiment in terms of art, something that gives a little more free hand.”
Crackdown, as a series, has received immense praise not only from the critics but from audiences across the world. Be it season one or season two, one may notice the different graphs in his character, unlike the ones that he’s played before. And for this, he’s all praise for director Apoorva Lakhia. “Crackdown happened because of my director friend, who happens to be from my school, Apoorva Lakhia. I’d met him a couple of times, and I must say that I’m a little shy in terms of approaching people for work. And, so he has a big role in me getting Crackdown; he was pretty convinced that I should be there.”
In the series, he plays the character of Zorawar Kalra, who works for the RAW. He’d earlier also played the roles of an Air Force officer and a DSP. So, when it comes to choosing a project, is he a conscious actor? Well, he disagrees! “I don’t consciously pick up such roles; I think maybe because of my voice or because I look too serious, which I am not. I am having too much fun; maybe after two months (laughing out loud),” says the Na Umra Ki Seema Ho actor, who believes that more than the genre of the project, the story plays an important part in not only making a project successful but also attracting the audience.
Going ahead, talking about the reviews, he feels it’s amazing that the Crackdown series is being compared to Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible. Looking back at his journey, he’d also gone on to participate in Rohit Shetty’s Fear Factor, Khatron Ke Khiladi: Darr Ka Blockbuster Returns. While there’s been a constant debate over whether the reality shows are truly real, his stint in the show explains how the fun2shh: Dudes in the 10th century actor proved to show who he is in real-life, as he says, “I did Fear Factor because that’s closest to the reality you get in TV. I don’t know if the rest of it is reality or not, and since it takes me time to open up, I think I hardly spoke during the entire season and I still lasted till the end, which cannot happen in the rest of the reality shows.” He also went on to recall how, to him, working on fun2shh to him was all about work and not deciding whether the project was good or bad.
Having been in the industry for over two decades, he believes that there is always work-related pressure, but, “I think god gives you the right wisdom and you over commit, and with age you realise that you need to balance out things, have faith in god, and need to believe that joh aapko milna hota hai woh aapko mil hi jaata hai, usme thoda bahut kaam karna padta hai. For now I only give my honesty to work, immandari, kaam ko sirf immandari deni chahiye kaam hojayega, khoon paseenae deni ki zaroorat nahi hai.”
As we come to an end to wrap up this chat with him, he signs off, saying, “It’s always good to work with the younger lot, and it’s always fun to get to know the other side of things since I don’t step out much. I don’t know much about where or what is happening. It’s good to know all that gossip from these people.”
