THE ICON INTERVIEW: WRITING HIS DESTINY
He mystified us as the baffling Tipu of Tau Dil Ka Kya Hua (TDKKH), he made us yearn for a Romeo like the lovelorn Sunny of Lashkara, he tore at our hearts as the transgender Shammo of Alif Allah Aur Insan (AAAI) and he tickles our hearts as the romantic Azhar in Dil Moam Ka Diya. But it’s quite likely that that outside of diehard television drama watchers, most will not know who Imran Ashraf is. That may soon be about to change if the actor has his way.
In person, the actor comes across as an all-out entertainer who can unleash an avalanche of emotions and yet retain a touch of eccentricity. He talks nineteen to the dozen, laughs heartily, and suddenly rattles off his lines from plays. His eyes say more than words ever could, which is perhaps what makes him such an intense actor. After a long journey of hits and misses, he won the Hum Award for Best Supporting Actor for Shammo in AAAI, finally achieving the recognition he had relentlessly strived for. But not one to rest on his laurels, Imran Ashraf continues to woo audiences with one outstanding performance after another, building up an interesting body of work in the past year.
There was a time people recognised him in plays but didn’t know his name. “I appeared as a child star once, playing Arifa Siddiqui’s son,” he says, his eyes wondering if I knew who he is talking about. “Then off I went to boarding school. Later, I joined my dad’s business and when it was liquidated, I was lost and didn’t have a clue what I should do next. I came to Karachi in 2010 when Dilawar sahib [a director] called me for Wafa Kaisi Kahan Ka Ishq where I had just one scene and my acting was so bad that the project heads wanted the scene removed.”
Imran feels indebted to some actors for their misbehaviour with him early on. “This particular actor abused me and asked the director ‘Where have you picked up this so-and-so from?’ I went home and thought that this person hasn’t descended from heaven and if he can act, so can I. I was so uncertain about my work that I used to pray that something would happen and the drama would get canned, or the city would go on strike. I just wanted to run away,” he says, smiling in his pale blue tee that ironically reads ‘Certainty’.
He’s been down and out but has never taken his eyes off the prize. Now with accolades finally coming his way in the past year, the actor wants to establish his own identity ...
Two years went by without any work. “My performance had improved but for another two years, I got no work,” he reminisces. “My Urdu was pathetic and I would listen to the news and repeat after them or repeat after actors in TV plays in order to improve my delivery. I would watch an editor at work to see what actors do which gets their scenes cut or what scenes don’t end up on the editing room floor. Then I played a mawali [street thug] in Ab Ke Saawan Barse. At this point I was about to hit rock-bottom — I had no place to live, I had no money, I was living day-to-day. Two more days and I would have gone back home to Islamabad. My friend Umar who worked as an assistant director called me up to say ‘There is a guy here who was offered a negative lead role but he can’t do it. The director is frustrated. Tu aja [You come and do it]’! And then the director called me.”
With 30 rupees in his pocket and an extra T-shirt in his backpack, Imran arrived on the sets and the director asked him to deliver two lines. “I asked him why he was so sure that I could do it. He said because everyone said so. I delivered the two lines and the director asked the make-up guy to puff me up. I had to borrow the DOP’s [Director of Photography’s] sandals and finally did the serial after which a couple more followed.”
Imran had started getting work but working with only that particular production house soon posed as a problem. “When work stopped coming from them, no one else would even touch me because they thought I was from a certain ‘group’ and another one-and-a-half year flew by. After Kala Jadoo [2014], I restarted my career, again playing the role of a mawali!”
But by this time, Imran says, he had learnt a valuable lesson. “Whether you have a few scenes or a few lines or no lines, there is a definite margin to perform in every role that you do. It all depends on the actor,” he emphasises.
His struggle which began a little before 2011 continued right up till 2017. “I have done much better work this year than what people saw in 2017, but it got lost in the multitude of dramas being produced. For instance, I played a Sikh in Rangbaaz on Express Entertainment but not many people saw it.”
After playing negative roles in four serials, he became what he terms “a standard villain.” He noticed that people on the street tended to act weirdly around him. “If I was with another actor, he would be greeted differently and I was treated as though I’m a bad person in real life too,” he says. “People from the industry tell me that an actor is an actor but I don’t agree even to this day. People respond differently to the kind of roles you choose. I was at a mall in Murree and some 50-odd people asked me ‘why are you always a villain’? I thought chhaap lag gayi [I’ve been branded]. I decided not to take on any more negative roles and once again there was no work available for me.”
While waiting for work, he decided to have a go at writing a script — Tabeer — before he hit another low. “Any intellectual would have loved the script but most TV channels rejected it,” he recalls. “I had written about 14 episodes when my luck finally changed and [director and producer] Ahson Talish got a hold of it. He asked me to complete it as he wanted to direct it. But when he presented it to a production house, it got rejected,” Imran bursts out laughing. “Finally, it went on air in 2018 with Iqra Aziz in the lead and the viewers loved it.”
In 2015, he did Farooq Rind’s Gul-i-Rana, and received a nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the Hum Awards. Then came the turning point of his career when Humayun Saeed was making Dil Lagi and Imran got a call from his production house Six Sigma. “I was in between shots [when I got the call],” he says, his eyes twinkling. “If I had opened the door and stepped on to the set, I wouldn’t have received the call. When I found out that Humayun Saeed wanted to meet me for a role in Dil Lagi, I marched off to see him straightaway.”
Once Dil Lagi went on air, everything else became irrelevant and good roles finally started coming his way “It was then that I realised how much people own actors in Pakistan,” he says, grinning.