From Mirzapur to Raakh: Ali Fazal on his career, craft and redefining the hero image

Some crimes refuse to fade from public memory. Nearly five decades after Geeta and Sanjay Chopra were abducted and murdered in Delhi, the 1978 Ranga-Billa case continues to evoke horror not only for its brutality, but because it changed how India thought about public safety. It led to demands for stronger policing, changed the way families saw children’s safety, and became one of the country’s defining true-crime stories.

The eight-episode crime thriller Raakh goes back to that dark chapter, and for lead Ali Fazal, who plays police officer J.P., it was something of a return. After the enormous success of Mirzapur (2018), he had consciously stayed away from long-form series. But this time, it was the writing that convinced him.

“The script was really brilliant,” Fazal tells THE WEEK. “The way Anusha (Nandakumar) and Sandeep (Saket) created this world, it was cathartic even reading it. I remember the first read really affected me.”

Instead of approaching it as another crime thriller, Fazal saw it as a deeply human story: his character is not an infallible hero but a police officer navigating an emotionally and professionally overwhelming case.

The role demanded far more than just slipping into uniform. Fazal says the cast researched policing of the 1970s, specifically in the Delhi of 1978.

They consulted retired officers and constables, studying everything from body language and arrest procedures to the investigative methods.

While doing the research, Fazal realised the situation hadn’t changed much. “These things are still happening,” he says. “Sometimes it’s cinema that is required to really help you look within.”

It’s no coincidence that Raakh comes at a moment when true-crime dramas are strongly resonating with audiences, and also when sensational crimes are hogging the headlines once again.

“I like bringing audiences into the minds of these characters,” says Fazal. “J.P. is someone who has worked and studied his way up through the police system. He experiences this immense claustrophobia, and I wanted people to feel that.”

The challenge, he says, was keeping the performance understated and not reducing the officer to a stereotype. Though the genre often risks sensationalism, he believes stories endure only when they examine the people behind the headlines rather than simply revisiting the crime itself.

It also reflects the kind of roles he seeks out. Unlike actors chasing larger-than-life heroes, Fazal has quietly built a career on emotionally layered characters, whether in independent cinema, mainstream Bollywood or international productions.

From an engineering student driven to suicide in 3 Idiots to acting alongside Dame Judi Dench in Victoria & Abdul, Fazal never fit inside a box—he revels outside it, recently turning producer with the critically acclaimed Girls will be Girls.

He says that is partly intentional and partly the result of the scripts that excite him. “If I can imagine exactly how a script will look on screen while reading it, sometimes that’s a no for me,” he says. “The gaps, the unpredictability, that’s where the magic happens. That’s where an actor gets to contribute something.”

Asked if audiences now anticipate a certain intensity from his performances, he says he doesn’t tailor roles around public expectations. Instead, he is fascinated by the hidden emotional worlds people carry. “We are essentially what we hide,” he says. “Everyone has their own trauma. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story. I want to explore that.”

For him, even seemingly ordinary lives contain extraordinary emotional complexity; the curiosity to explore those complicated layers is what drives him. Of course, success has also changed his choices. “When you’re trying to run your kitchen, you don’t always have the luxury of being selective,” he says. “Now I can afford to wait for stories that genuinely excite me.”

Sharing the house with an actor—wife Richa Chadha—also shapes his decisions. She also has to be impressed with his body of work.

“I’m more selective now, but I’m also more ready to take risks,” he says, adding that people are increasingly willing to embrace unconventional storytelling. “I thought [Raakh] would mainly appeal to cinephiles. But it has broken through both worlds.”

Working with international filmmakers has shaped his craft in unexpected ways. “The world is much bigger than our own bubble,” he says. “The biggest thing I’ve learnt is to listen. I work best when I’m outside my comfort zone.”

He also has to keep himself creatively engaged. “I’m scared I’ll get bored of myself one day,” he says with a laugh. There are still genres he wants to explore, among them a full-fledged action film. One with emotional depth.

“I’d love to do a different kind of action film,” he says. “I’m waiting for the right script.” Something like Dhurandhar? “Yes, why not. But more like a biopic.”

Away from the screen, Fazal laughs at the image many people have of him. “People think I’m this very serious, bookish science-student type,” he says. The reality, he insists, is quite different. At home, he and Chadha regularly put on music and dance around the house. “We’re mad together,” he says. “Once or twice a week, we’ll blast music, dance and have our own party.”

These days, though, another audience matters more than critics or the masses—his two-year-old daughter. He already imagines the day she will watch his films. “I don’t want to be uncool in front of her,” he says with a laugh.