{"id":3637,"date":"2026-07-06T12:09:44","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3637"},"modified":"2026-07-06T12:09:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:09:44","slug":"ali-fazal-on-guddu-pandits-return-in-mirzapur-the-movie-the-haunting-world-of-raakh-and-refusing-to-be-typecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3637","title":{"rendered":"Ali Fazal on Guddu Pandit\u2019s Return in \u2018Mirzapur: The Movie\u2019, the Haunting World of \u2018Raakh\u2019 and Refusing to Be Typecast"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\nAli Fazal has spent a decade and a half deliberately refusing to sit still. He credits his mother for it. Bombarded with world cinema from an early age, he came out of college convinced the industry was bigger than what he\u2019d been shown, and he built a career designed to prove it.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3635\">Itv Boss \u2018Hopeful\u2019 Sky Acquisition Will Clear Regulators: \u2018The Market Has Changed So Fundamentally\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI have to entertain myself first. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a great feat, but I get bored of doing the same things,\u201d Fazal says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe returns as Guddu Pandit in \u201cMirzapur: The Movie,\u201d the theatrical continuation of the Prime Video crime drama that made him a household name. He points to \u201cPeaky Blinders: The Immortal Man\u201d as the closest reference point for what the franchise is attempting.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI think this is the first time India\u2019s doing something like this, so very excited and also, I mean, it\u2019s an experiment, but hoping to pull off and see if people come into the theaters,\u201d Fazal says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe film does not carry Guddu through to where the series left him. Instead, it rewinds, which meant Fazal had to strip away seasons of accumulated hardening to find the character\u2019s earlier self again.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cIt was a bit of a memory washout that I had to deliberately do, because seasons almost behave like human memories,\u201d he says. He calls the character, underneath the bodybuilder physique and gangster posturing, one of India\u2019s \u201cunloved men,\u201d a common type he says the culture produces and then has to reckon with in its stories.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThat reluctance to return to long-form storytelling nearly kept him away from \u201cRaakh\u201d too. The Prime Video investigative thriller, drawn from one of India\u2019s most notorious real-life cases, follows Sub-Inspector Jayprakash, a working-class policeman who rose through the ranks on merit and finds himself consumed by a case that outgrows him. Fazal had been circling a collaboration with director Prosit Roy for years before the two finally aligned on a project.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThis story came at the right time because \u2018Mirzapur: The Movie\u2019 had gotten pushed, the shooting thing,\u201d Fazal says. \u201cSo I was actually halfway prepping for that and kind of building up. So I got very scared when I heard this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe describes Jayprakash\u2019s arc as tangled up with the character\u2019s strained relationship with his father, a former police sergeant whose currency was deference to superiors, set against a son determined to earn his place honestly. A second season, Fazal says, is not confirmed, though he believes the makers left the story open enough to accommodate one.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3633\">Netflix France Chief Pauline Dauvin Slams Expanded Investment Obligations: \u2018These New Rules Go Too Far\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI think the makers are very excited. Amazon is very, very, very happy indeed, so I\u2019m sure they will try and come back with one,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBetween a hard-boiled procedural and a stylized crime saga sits the rest of Fazal\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9, which stretches through Indian mainstream cinema, independent film, and Hollywood credits including \u201cVictoria &amp; Abdul,\u201d \u201cDeath on the Nile,\u201d \u201cKandahar\u201d and \u201cFurious 7.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe has also begun shaping which stories get made at all, through Pushing Buttons Studios, the production banner he runs with his wife, actor-producer Richa Chadha. Their debut production, \u201cGirls Will Be Girls,\u201d directed by Shuchi Talati, won the Sundance Film Festival\u2019s audience award and a jury prize for its lead actor. Fazal points to gaps in the Indian industry\u2019s infrastructure, from the near total absence of theatrical distribution for documentaries to how little independent filmmakers know about submitting to festivals in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFazal\u2019s near-term slate includes a cameo in the partition drama \u201cBatwara,\u201d produced by Aamir Khan and starring Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta, and a segment in Netflix\u2019s \u201cLust Stories\u201d directed by Shakun Batra. He is also set to shoot an as-yet-untitled English-language film in London early next year, which he describes as a corporate drama in the vein of \u201cGlengarry Glen Ross\u201d meets \u201cSeverance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe is careful, still, about what international collaboration with India actually requires going forward. Access built on personal connections, he argues, does not translate abroad, and the contracts governing Indian productions need to modernize to match.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe have to start championing each other,\u201d Fazal says, pointing to how fragmented the industry remains across languages and how rarely its independent filmmakers organize on shared ground.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tFazal doesn\u2019t have a fix for any of it yet. But between two very different roles this year, a production company still finding its footing, and a stack of scripts he says are close to shoot-ready, he isn\u2019t waiting around for one either.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3631\">Anurag Kashyap Boards Rotterdam-Premiered Bangladeshi Drama \u2018Delupi\u2019 (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ali Fazal on &#8216;Mirzapur: The Movie&#8217;, the haunting world of &#8216;Raakh&#8217; and why he refuses to be boxed into one genre or industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[957,2991,127,2992],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-ali-fazal","tag-mirzapur","tag-prime-video-2","tag-raakh-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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