Ali Fazal has spent a decade and a half deliberately refusing to sit still. He credits his mother for it. Bombarded with world cinema from an early age, he came out of college convinced the industry was bigger than what he’d been shown, and he built a career designed to prove it.
“I have to entertain myself first. I don’t think that’s a great feat, but I get bored of doing the same things,” Fazal says.
He returns as Guddu Pandit in “Mirzapur: The Movie,” the theatrical continuation of the Prime Video crime drama that made him a household name. He points to “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” as the closest reference point for what the franchise is attempting.
“I think this is the first time India’s doing something like this, so very excited and also, I mean, it’s an experiment, but hoping to pull off and see if people come into the theaters,” Fazal says.
The film does not carry Guddu through to where the series left him. Instead, it rewinds, which meant Fazal had to strip away seasons of accumulated hardening to find the character’s earlier self again.
