Outsider by choice

New Indian Express

3 days ago

The exercise, he says, was one of unlearning. 'To pretend to not know acting—when it's what I've done my entire life—is to go against my own instincts. And to do that without looking fake, to make the audience believe I was someone unequipped with technique, required a very different approach. I had to believe it myself first.' For Siddiqui, belief is the cornerstone of craft. 'You have to believe that this world you're in is real. In this case, I had to believe I was someone who had never acted before. That belief had to come before anything else.'
Despite his success, Siddiqui remains deeply connected to the uncertainties that marked his early years. An alumnus of the National School of Drama, he began with minor, often overlooked roles in films like Sarfarosh and Munna Bhai MBBS. Recognition came gradually—first through Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday and then more substantially with Peepli Live and Gangs of Wasseypur, the latter making him a definitive voice in the new wave of Hindi cinema.
Over the past decade, he has earned both acclaim and audience admiration for roles in Manto, Photograph, and the acclaimed Netflix series Sacred Games. Yet, for all his achievements, Siddiqui does not romanticise the industry. If anything, he is one of its most vocal critics. He speaks of a troubling creative stagnation, calling it a kind of 'creatocracy', a system where commerce replaces originality and comfort overrides experimentation. His concerns are not unfounded. 'We've normalised lifting—from songs to scripts, from international cinema to the Southern film industries. Even some so-called cult films are nothing more than polished remakes. Where is the originality in that?' He also points to the increasing reliance on marketing gimmicks and manipulated success metrics.
'You can inflate numbers, buy good reviews, and even book your own shows to make a film seem like a hit. But you can't sustain it. The audience is too intelligent now. They know the difference between what's being sold and what's being felt,' he adds.