It’s his chameleonic ability that sets Nawazuddin Siddiqui apart from his colleagues. While an actor must be able to represent his character, Siddiqui tends to slink into his skin, creating a creature that is all too real.
It is this quality that led him to creep up the ladder of success with a turn as a vengeful gangster in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), a disturbed serial killer in Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016) and the criminal overlord Ganesh Gaitonde in Sacred Games.
In his latest movie, Rautu Ka Raaz, Siddiqui dons the hat of a clever cop in the sleepy town of Rautu ki Beli, somewhere in Uttarakhand, where nothing much seems to happen.
Until the murder that is.
When the warden of a blind school on the mountain is found dead in her bedroom, the town must contend with the first killing 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 not only must Negi contend with the whirlpool that is his mind but also the cluelessness of his subordinates.
“I think it’s a very different kind of movie. You see, most murder mysteries have the same pace and violence and all. But in our film, we have a very slow-paced film because of the village [which is so laid-back],” says Siddiqui.
An odd character
He adds that the draw of the character was his ‘weirdness’. “He’s not a regular type of man. What is the weirdest thing about him? He doesn’t like the regular things. He was a very careless character. [It was only once he started investigating that he slowly became interested in the case]. Otherwise, he is a laid-back type of a person.”
So how did he get into character? He insists that while everyone has trauma, tapping into it for a role isn’t easy. “Every person has some trauma in their life but to sit with it is inviting a disease — it is better [if you believe] 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 particular way of being. “I think actors should be very aware of people; listen to people, interact with people, with ordinary people. Because when you play a character, you get to know the reference. What happens is if that experience is not a real-life experience, you can only conceive a character from movies. Especially when actors become established, they lose their contact with the world in real life. I feel that the more I have a connection with people, the more they enrich me,” he explains.
Complexity is key
Like most actors who enjoy their craft, Siddiqui is uninterested in playing two dimensional, flat characters. “I enjoy all the characters but there are some characters that I don’t enjoy [playing]. Those are the one-shaded characters, which are very good. Okay. I don’t like those characters who don’t have any evil in them, frankly speaking,” he deadpans.
And while he has had many versatile turns on the big screen, there are still some movies that he can’t help but wish he had worked in. This includes Sparsh, in which Naseeruddin Shah plays a blind man and Pushpak, which is the contemporary Bollywood version of prince and the pauper.
As he enjoys his return to Zee5Global in Rautu Ka Raaz after his stint in the 2023 film Haddi, Siddiqui recalls his time shooting in the village. “Everyone was so welcoming. And while I’m not much of a eater, I did consume a lot of Maggi (noodles) and paneer (cottage cheese) while we filmed,” he says.