Ali Fazal admits that he lied a lot as a young boy. “Like a lot!” He recalls coming home from school and telling his family he had won awards. “It was horrible, I used to make up stories. But eventually, I’m doing that for a living now,” says Fazal. Incidentally, it was a white lie about Shrabani Basu’s book, Victoria & Abdul , that may have landed him a role in the film based on it.
Fazal’s first choice of profession — a pilot — was crushed with the words, “ Yeh chauffeur-giri mat karna ,” (don’t be a chauffeur) by his father. It was a jolt no doubt, but came from a place of concern after a family member in the profession had a near fatal crash. He found his calling in acting at Doon School in Dehradun, when he played Trinculo, the jester, in The Tempest . And this love for the stage continued even after he moved to Mumbai to study.
While studying Economics at St Xavier’s College and pursuing theatre alongside, he was cast in 3 Idiots (2009), followed by Always Kabhi Kabhi (2011). “It was a big role,” he says about the latter. “It tanked at the box office, but it taught me a lot.” After a string of films, like Fukrey (2013), Bobby Jasoos (2014) and Sonali Cable (2014), Fazal will next be seen alongside Dame Judi Dench in the Stephen Frears-directed Victoria & Abdul .
Across the border
His role as the second lead in Victoria & Abdul is not his first international outing on the big screen (that was in 2015’s action-packed Fast and Furious 7). An unusual tip-off prompted Fazal to send in a phone recorded screen test to the team casting in India. He was called back a month later. “Half of B-town was involved and we went through extensive readings with different actors; it was hard and intimidating,” he recalls, adding that his first experience of meeting Frears was of the director sprawled on a couch thanks to a bout of ‘Delhi belly’. The actor lied through his teeth about how great Basu’s book was, but it all worked when he got the good news (in a Bandra bar’s loo, no less). He believes “there’s something fantastical about [Lee Hall’s script].”
As for the people that the film’s characters are based on, Fazal describes their relationship as “spiritual”. Victoria signed her letters to Abdul with ‘your true friend’ or ‘your loving mother’ while others had words like, ‘The Queen misses her munshi ’. “It was a comforting relationship,” he asserts. This bigotry — that one cannot have an Indian Muslim servant this close to the Queen — has spanned centuries and continues till today. It’s perhaps what helped Fazal connect with Abdul’s character. After all, Abdul — who rose to be the Queen’s political advisor short of attaining knighthood — was ahead of his time, letting his work speak for itself, which in the end was his undoing.
Fazal would also like his work to do the same, but is worried about his future. “As actors [we] end up facing so much rejection in life, that we end up cynical,” he says. “It’s a scary notion and I don’t want to be that.”
Same but different
The experience of working on Victoria & Abdul really opened his mind. “This is going to sound cheap, but I used to think “ woh bahar wale log hain, to unka andaza alag hai, hume wahan jaake kuch karna hai apni chaud dikhani hai. ” (They’re foreigners and we need to go there, do something and prove our mettle). What happened, instead, was that he realised everyone is the same, no matter where you go. Dench, for instance, who Fazal describes as a fairy, was hilarious, and simultaneously so hard working that it made him want to catch up and be on par. Then there’s the brilliant Eddie Izzard (who plays Bertie, Prince of Wales) who Fazal connected with on life and politics. Michael Gambon (who plays Lord Salisbury), a “16-year-old-trapped in a 70-year-old body” was the funniest on set, often conversing with Fazal in gibberish just for fun.
On the cards
Fazal has just wrapped up Fukrey Returns , which will release later this year. “It’s very different and there’s a lot of action and more of me,” he smiles. “I didn’t like myself in the first part.” There are two other films, Love Affair and Tadka , plus an under-wraps project.
Also on the anvil is a short film about the Internet and two web series, and after much cajoling Fazal reveals, “One is from outside India and one is from India, with an international studio.” He adds there’s a bit of a legal problem. “If you’re on Netflix, you can’t act in something on Amazon or the other way around. But I’m not saying it’s those two.” While promoting his film, Fazal and Dench have come together on a shoot to support English designer Katherine Hamnett’s cause to help the refugees of the Syrian civil war. Then there are the rumours of his collaboration with Paris Jackson (Michael Jackson’s daughter) floating around. It looks like Fazal’s got a very busy calendar to tackle.
