Zahan Kapoor, who recently made his debut playing the titular role in Faraaz, speaks to The Pioneer over an exclusive chat, about his research for playing the character, his love for sports, and also making his own mark, irrespective of coming from the Kapoor family.
Tejal Sinha
Faraaz helmed by Hansal Mehta opened to rave reviews, and for all the right reasons. The film had introduced fresh faces including Zahan Kapoor, Aditya Rawal, and Reshham Sahaani.
Based on the July 2016 terror attack in Dhaka’s Holey Artisan Bakery, Faraaz follows a group of young, educated, radicalised Muslim boys who perpetrated the attack and mounts a story of courage through its titular character of Faraaz Hossain (played by Zahan Kapoor), the 20-year-old who refused to leave his friends behind even when he had the option to escape.
While the rest of the cast had done a pretty good job, one can’t just ignore the fact that Zahan, being a debutant, had put up a fantabulous performance. We reached out to the debutant, who has got his perfect break in the industry with Faraaz.
To begin with, Zahan feels fortunate enough to be able to do enough ground research, and we must say, his research along with the helmer paid off. “Faraaz was a tremendous young man and I was lucky enough to go with Hansal sir to Dhaka and meet a few of his family, some other survivors, and journalists too.
I was lucky to go at an early stage of the development, do a tremendous amount of ground research, speak to these people and understand firsthand about the event and the life that Faraaz lived. We were also given incredible lessons by Ekhlaq sahab to the tenets of Islam, understanding the Quran Sharif, interpretations, how to live with the faith and to understand what it would have been like to be brought in the same kind of belief system and household.”
And, then comes finding the truth of the moment, and finding yourself within the unprecedented situation. Elucidating the character of soldiers in Uri, he says, “It was not like I had to interpret the character. For Instance, say it in Uri, where the character is a soldier who has been trained to do something. Here it is a boy who has his whole future ahead of him. Arguably he has every opportunity and blessings at his feet and even after being a devout Muslim himself, he had every opportunity to live to be known and be fed, and so he chose to stand by his friend and he chose to believe in what he believed in and found the strength of his faith, the same faith that brought him up and been manipulated in front of his very own eyes. For me, that had to come out from his own family, to come from a place of genuine love and the sense that inside each and everyone of us is a human being capable of doing the right thing of being kind, and generous.
Faraaz to me is a great symbol for that kind of deep humanity that’s there within all of us and our capability of doing the right thing when the time demands. It was a journey of exploring that, surrendering to the vision of the filmmaker, the scenario, and context of the situation, where we find ourselves.”
However, it was also a challenging role because, “the role and the interpretation which I think is an incredible choice made by the filmmaker and the writer, to tell the story as a one night thriller where you can kind of experience it in almost real time. As an audience you see what it means for a character to immerse. Here you are waiting and letting the story unfold first and letting the characters reveal themselves. So the challenge was to find the honesty of that, to find the sincerity and human values at the core of the character and to hopefully breathe life into it.”
Kapoor’s are a big name in Bollywood. And Zahan being a part of the Kapoor clan, the grandson of the legendary actor Shashi Kapoor, might have opened some doors for him. But he chose to carve his own path. However, he says his family had always supported him in every life decision that he had taken, be it sports or acting. Wait! Sports? Yes, Zahan had a deep passion for sports. Let’s hear from him, “I was playing polo. I was introduced to horses at a young age at 10-11 years. I was extremely passionate about that and so I was much more of a sporting person more involved in that world.”
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the “Kapoors” have been one of the celeb families to always embrace art. Having been brought up in such an environment that encouraged and embraced creativity and art, he says, “I always had an instinct that I wanted to participate within something creative and that urge was there. I was allowed to discover for myself and pushed to kind of experience the arts myself.
I found myself writing a short film script and making it at the age of 14-15, I went on to start assisting even while I was in school at 16 in summers, and while I was 18-19, I started working full-time in production and behind the camera. I fell in love with movie making. I thought it was the most magical thing to put so many things together and come out with a story which can be shared with the world. It’s just like the way cooking is, you keep all the ingredients in the dish and then you share it and you can enjoy it. I’m a lover and seeker of all kinds of adventures. I swim, surf, and it’s because my family encourages me to seek out these things. I’m very blessed for that reason and I’m blessed that they let me and empowered me to make my own choices.”
While many would think that getting a break in Bollywood for Zahan would have been easy because he hails from Kapoor family, the actor thinks otherwise, “When I decided that I felt like I wanted to pursue acting because I was enjoying it, they encouraged me they were like do everything you can to learn as much as you can about it but do it on your own feet because we aren’t going to do any favors that my father told me I’m happy that he told me because that made sure whatever I do I can take ownness of it and take responsibility for it.”
