After being through a pandemic for almost two-and-a-half years, life has never been the same again for many of us. Yes, those lockdown times changed lots of things, in fact, in showbiz too some blooming careers took a hit. But with life coming back to normal, those who faced the brunt of the new normal have also been getting back on track. One of them is actor Zaheer Iqbal who made his debut with Notebook in 2019 but had to stay away from movie sets soon after the pandemic hit, but the good news is that his spirit didn’t break. Now as he gears up to return to the big screen with Double XL, I talk to him about his role, being on a set after so long, working with Sonakshi Sinha and Huma Qureshi, and lots more…
But before you read our conversation, watch Double XL’s trailer here:
Talking about his character Zorawar Rehmani, Zaheer told me…
Zorawar Rehmani is a fantastic character and whoever watches the film will enjoy this character. There is a lot of similarities between me and Zorawar, he is a jugaadu, exactly like me. When a character is written keeping you in mind, getting into the skin gets easy. The task in acting is when you are trying to be somebody else, when your instinct is to react differently. In Notebook, I was so different from who I am that I had to be very careful about my spontaneous reactions, but here it was just being yourself.
He even shared how he reacted and hoped to be a part of Double XL when he heard the story for the first time. Zaheer shares…
I was blown away the first time I heard the story. I was there during the inception of the story, we were chilling, and Mudassar (Aziz) bhai looked at Huma and Sonakshi who were having a blast, there was a moment when they went to eat, but they hesitated for a bit thinking how they gained weight during the lockdown, but then they continued to eat. That’s when we had this conversation about how men and women should be comfortable in their own skin. When Mudassar bhai narrated the script to me, I thought it was just for feedback, but during that I was wishing that he asks me to play the character of Zorawar. After the narration he told me that he wanted me to play Zorawar. Lot of films today start off as a project, but the reason for making this film was so pure and it was in front of my eyes. The journey has been a blast.
He also spoke about being on a set after so long…
It took me a couple of days to calm myself down because the excitement of coming back on set after so long was there. It is sad that the pandemic happened and I had to wait for so long to be back on a set because when you come to the industry before the first film, you always have expectations and excitement. You think that after this one film does well, I will be on set every day. But then I had to wait for so long. However, I made sure to enjoy those moments on set.
Well, Zaheer told me how he learned a lot on the job from Huma and Sonakshi about certain technicalities related to positions and lighting, he certainly was impressed by the ladies. But Zaheer also had a complaint…
He said,
The only harrowing part of the film was that Sonakshi and Huma got to eat, but we had to maintain a diet.
Well, the journey of Double XL has been quite an enjoyable one for Zaheer, and now that the pandemic is behind us, he has some promising things in store for us. While he couldn’t share much about it, all he told me was that something exciting is coming from him in January or February next year. I wish him luck as I wait for the announcement. Way to go Zaheer!