From making his Hindi film debut with ‘No One Killed Jessica’ in 2011 to giving a stellar performance in Hansal Mehta’s web series ‘Scoop’ to now doing complete justice to his role in ‘Haddi’, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub has proved how immensely talented he is. Though he appeared in some big movies with big stars, it didn’t turn fruitful for him in terms of his career. In an interview with Garima Das, Zeeshan opened up about how these unsuccessful movies have helped him to choose important characters and that eventually shaped his career.
In 2017, Zeeshan was seen in Salman Khan starrer ‘Tubelight’. In the same year, he was seen in ‘Raees’ with Shah Rukh Khan. In 2018, he starred in SRK starrer ‘Zero’ and Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Thugs of Hindostan’. Ironically, these were all mega movies but all were damp squibs except ‘Raees’.
Asked the ‘Tanu Weds Manu’ actor if it affected him as an actor to which he said, “As an actor, it didn’t affect me much but in terms of my career I think it was definitely really disheartening and disappointing when those films didn’t work except Raees. Raees did well. Zero, Tubelight and Thugs of Hindostan didn’t do well. So, it was really disappointing but as I have said earlier also that the greatest learning I got was that even when these films were flops or whatever you want to call them, nobody was blaming me. I know it will again sound ironic but I was like, ‘No, I want to be a part of a film, I want to own the film in that sense that if it doesn’t do well there should be some onus on me too’. It shouldn’t be like that you are not even that important. If a film is not working you are not even mentioned in that category. People will say, ‘Zeeshan was really good but the film didn’t do well’. So I was really disappointed in that too.”
He said it helped him shape his career as he was quite clear that he would go for films where he would get important characters that had to do something to the screen. Zeeshan added, “It started with Article 15 and suddenly things started changing after that. People started believing that I could pull off the whole world on my shoulders. Then I started getting well-rooted characters who play an important part on the screen.”
