Raza Talish has been proving his mettle as a talented young actor. His career may just be a year old and he may have just a handful of roles to his credit, but he’s been doing a good job at standing out. Still, I have to ask him as we begin our interview: does he think that he would be where he is right now, so soon after his debut, acting in prime projects, if it weren’t for his surname? Raza’s genealogy is firmly entrenched in show business. His father, Aehsun Talish, is a renowned television director and his grandfather, Agha Talish, was a well-known and much-celebrated film actor.

“Perhaps I wouldn’t be here at all if I wasn’t a Talish,” says Raza. I’m guessing that he has been asked this question before. He continues, “I have studied filmmaking at the National College of Arts [NCA] so I haven’t stepped into this career out of nowhere. The dinner table conversation at my home revolves around the entertainment industry. It has always been in the air around me: conversations on dialogues, scenes and character development. If I wasn’t a Talish, you never know, perhaps I would have been a fighter pilot. There was a time when I wanted to be one!” he grins.

Much of Raza’s limited repertoire of work has been helmed by his director father; most noticeably, last year’s hit Suno Chanda 2 and Mushk, which has just begun airing and boasts a star-studded cast. And yet, it wouldn’t be fair if I associated the word ‘nepotism’ with this young actor. Anyone familiar with Raza’s work will acknowledge that he is truly good at what he does. In Suno Chanda 2, for instance, he played a befuddled village bumpkin who spoke with a thick Punjabi accent. He could have gotten lost in a show teeming with loud, comical characters, but Raza’s ‘Mithoo’ quickly gained popularity.

Associating nepotism with the young Raza Talish wouldn’t be fair. Anyone familiar with his acting work will acknowledge that he is truly good at what he does

“I studied Suno Chanda’s format,” he says. “The most popular characters had some classic one-liners that they kept repeating. All credit goes to Saima Akram Chudhery for Suno Chanda 2’s script, but I coined the dialogue ’Main batata hoon’ [Let me tell you] for Mithoo.”

He continues, “I created a character graph for Mithoo, defining the arcs to his personality, identifying how he plays dumb at first and, later, tries to become the over-smart city boy.”

I observe to him that most young actors are not so adept at constructing characters for themselves. No doubt, his personal insights must have been based on what he has learnt from his family. He agrees, adding, “I always wanted to be a director and I initially got into acting because I wanted to understand the dynamics of what it was like to be in front of the camera. Then, I developed a passion for acting as well.

“I was working as an assistant director on the sets of the upcoming film Tich Button when I got a call from my mother, telling me that I should audition for a role in the new season of Suno Chanda. There was a new character in the story and both my parents thought that I would be able to do it justice. I auditioned and got rejected, but then I auditioned again and was hired!”

At a time when drama storylines are often clichéd and are created with ratings in mind rather than quality, Raza is lucky to be playing characters that give him the opportunity to perform; roles that have shades, that intrigue or draw laughter.

We return to the very first question that I had posed to him: despite being talented, he couldn’t have scored a role in such a coveted commercial drama had his father not been the director of the project. “I auditioned just like everyone else but, yes, perhaps I wouldn’t have been noticed by the team so easily,” he concedes. “But then, I got my next projects on my own.”

His upcoming projects are two web-series that are going to be airing on the Indian streaming platform Zee5: Haseeb Hassan’s Dhoop ki Deewar and Anjum Shahzad’s Abdullahpur ka Devdas. According to Raza, he plays an army captain in the former and has a more pivotal role in the latter.

In a short span of time, he has worked with a wide range of actors: seasoned old-timers as well as today’s ‘it’ heroes. Who does he look up to? “I look up to all of them but I don’t want to be any of them. I just want to be Raza Talish.”

He’s only 25 and could easily vie to be the next big heartthrob. But Raza is yet to build his social media profile or enlist a PR agent to promote himself. Why? “If I need to, I will,” he muses, “but honestly, these things don’t attract me. I have grown up in a world where I have witnessed the ups and downs of fame. I would rather not waste time on gaining online popularity and, instead, focus on my acting and play characters that excite me.”

At a time when drama storylines are often clichéd and are created with ratings in mind rather than quality, Raza is lucky to be playing characters that give him the opportunity to perform; roles that have shades, that intrigue or draw laughter. He may be a ‘Talish’, but he deserves all the accolades that have come his way.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 30th, 2020