Osama Tahir wants to talk about craft.

He wants to take a break every now and then from TV’s lucrative landscape and dabble with theatre. He wants to keep getting reminded of what he loves about his profession, and why he chose to be an actor in the first place. He is just as happy performing to an auditorium with an audience of merely 11, who give him a standing ovation, as he is in being part of a TV drama that generates mass popularity.

His raison d’etre, he tells me, is to do roles that are “different”.

That’s not an easy goal to achieve in an entertainment industry intent on churning out hits by relying on cookie-cutter, mass-centric storylines. Osama’s acting prowess is impressive but, while some of the TV drama characters he has played may have been memorable, others have been not. He also acts on stage when he can and dabbles with cinema when a script appeals to him.

I ask him if he’s happy with where his career is right now? He pauses to think.

Osama Tahir has done some memorable roles as an actor. And he has done some cookie-cutter ones too. He enjoys the mass reach of TV, but turns to theatre when he feels the need to challenge himself. So what are the ‘di! erent’ roles he is looking out for?

“I don’t think one is ever satisfied. What I would love to do is take on roles that challenge me more creatively, that shake things up inside out.”

He continues: “I recently went back to stage after a break of six years. I worked in a play directed by Sunil Shankar and it made me rediscover the performing arts. Initially, when I got the script, I thought that my part would be an easy one to play. Then, I started finding it to be difficult, especially since we were also working on the script simultaneously.

“Ultimately, I reached a point where I was questioning if I could act at all or if I had simply been fooling myself into believing that I could be a part of this profession. Thankfully, every night that we performed, there were standing ovations. People would come backstage after the show and praise our work.

“I don’t want praise particularly, but I do want people to like my work. It’s more difficult drawing in an audience to theatre or cinema than it is to get them to simply turn on the TV and watch a drama. The audience watching theatre isn’t satisfied with run-of-the-mill work. I want to do more work that’s different, that people like.”

Sifting through Osama’s career, the occasional ‘different’ roles do stand out, the most recent being his acting stint in the revenge thriller Carma. The plot kept one guessing — you never knew who was good and who was bad and what would happen next. Osama was the male lead whose character went through multiple twists and turns at breakneck speed. He acted very well — but the movie’s lack of success at the box office meant that not many people got to see and appreciate his performance.

I mention this to him and he says, “Yes. I think Carma suffered because people just didn’t know that there was a movie in the cinema that they could watch. I think that it was a fun movie but it couldn’t even benefit from word-of-mouth reviews, because not many people came to see it in the first place. We need to know how to make a movie, how to promote it and, then, make sure that it lives up to expectations.”

Prior to Carma’s release, I had met Osama and he had been optimistic that people would gravitate towards the movie’s fast-paced, suspense-ridden storyline. Now, looking at Carma’s dismal box office run, would he be more careful about signing on to a movie next?

“I sign on to a project if I like it, not because I think that it will do well at the box office,” he tells me. “It’s unfortunate that actors are subject to scrutiny based on how well their projects do when actually the success is also dependent on many other factors. When I get a script, I look at the story and how my character fits into it. I signed on to Carma because the storytelling wasn’t straightforward, and I liked that.”

On the other hand, he also signed on to Betiyaan, a long-winded drama with a very typical script which aired on ARY Digital and was produced by Big Bang Entertainment. The 71 episode-long production was very popular with the masses. What does he think clicked with the audience, given that the story had nothing new to offer?

Osama laughs. “I think even the audience didn’t know why they were so hooked to it. And while making the drama we certainly didn’t expect it to become such a big hit. As far as the story goes, it was pretty standard, but the vision of the director Meesam Naqvi was different. Perhaps he knew that the only way the drama could be successful was if he built characters and not caricatures, if you know what I mean?”

I don’t want praise particularly, but I do want people to like my work. It’s more difficult drawing in an audience to theatre or cinema than it is to get them to simply turn on the TV and watch a drama. The audience watching theatre isn’t satisfied with run-of-the-mill work. I want to do more work that’s different, that people like.”

I did — I told him it was an interesting way of describing the drama-making process. Osama further elaborates: “For instance, for my character Saad, we actually sat down and figured out the whys and the whats to him. We developed a backstory for him and figured out what made him tick. It made the story interesting.”

A lot of actors, having invested a certain number of years into their careers, become adamant that they only want to play lead roles. Is he now similarly focused towards playing the hero?

“I’d love to play the hero, of course, but I would never want to miss out on a good story and a good role simply because it isn’t the main lead,” he says. “I’ll sign on to a supporting role if it’s an interesting one.”

Speaking of supporting roles, his enactment of a supportive, but complicated, brother in 2019’s Ruswai, a Six Sigma Plus drama which aired on ARY Digital, was very well-received. Was he offered multiple ‘good brother’ roles following the drama’s success?

Osama laughs again. “Yes, the typecasting does happen. I’d get scripts where I would be told that I am the good brother and I would ask them, but what does he do, does he have any vulnerable moments, does he ever go crazy? There has to be something more!”

Can struggling to make a mark in a very competitive industry while looking out for more distinctive roles, take a toll on an actor’s mental health? He ponders over this.

“It isn’t easy, definitely,” he says. “Back when Ruswai was a hit, people would come and meet me and discuss my role everywhere I went. I would go to the mall with my family and constantly be approached by people. After a few months, though, they stopped coming up to me and it’s only human that you feel upset that they’ve forgotten you already. I had to shake myself up at that point and remind myself that even I didn’t remember my role in Ruswai as vividly after all these months. Why would people remember?

“I can’t let myself go down that rabbit hole. But it’s not an easy job.”

It’s not an easy job but Osama Tahir loves it. He’ll sign on to the cookie-cutter roles and the unique ones, enjoy the mass reach of TV but return to theatre when he feels the need to challenge himself. He’ll also sign on to the off-the-wall movie role and have a ball, not fretting too much over the box office numbers.

His next drama is with 7th Sky Entertainment, co-starring Sami Khan, Ahsan Khan and Madiha Imam, among others, which is scheduled to begin airing shortly after Eid-ul-Fitr.

With a major production house at the helm and a cast that includes veteran actors, it is likely that the drama will get viewership. Which would be great, of course. But Osama Tahir isn’t dwelling too much upon that right now.

He’d rather talk about his craft.

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 23rd, 2023