24th March, Mumbai: From being a supermodel to an established film actor, to now making his entry in theatre, Muzamil Ibrahim enjoys wearing many hats. Surprising his fans with this Ila Aruna and KK Raina’s production stage production Baby Blues, he is happy to have explored this side of himself and that too at the prestigious Prithvi Theatre. He plays the role of a man, who juggles the roles of a dutiful husband and father in the play. The actor, who has starred in popular films like Dhoka, Horn ‘OK’ Pleassss, Will you Marry Me, and the web series Special Ops, talks about his new journey.
“I am extremely excited. Not many actors in India will do theatre once they have done movies or been a part of a big series, which I feel is redundant. Performing at Prithvi had been a dream I nurtured ever since I became an actor, and I’m glad I got to stand on its wooden planks and express myself and that too in my debut performance. Ask any Indian actor how they are preparing for their role, and their synonymous answer is I’m going to the gym. It’s so cringing to hear it over and over. If you are not training yourself as an actor to be better I don’t think you deserve to be here; but this is India, anything rolls, unfortunately,” he says.
Baby Blues is directed by veterans like Ila Arun and KK Raina. “I would rather say I got to work under their tutelage, both of them are such institutions of learning in themselves. I took them as my teachers and it was like going back to school again. I soaked in everything they had to teach and from other actors, new and old. It’s been a great learning curve,” he adds.
On what prompted him to take the theatre way considering he is doing considerably well on OTT, Muzamil shares, “I read a lot and followed a lot of British actors, who always pointed towards theatre in their conversations. I’m a hardworking actor. I’m always working on myself to improve my craft, even in isolation. I follow a timetable and have set time aside for acting every day. It was getting to me to act alone in isolation and I wanted to learn; also I love to break and construct myself as a person. I wanted to give myself another peak to climb. So Baby Blues is by American playwright Tammy Ryan, and it deals with postpartum depression most often not properly diagnosed and treated in women. I play the husband in the play, who has to deal with his work, his newborn kid, juggle the new responsibilities and also someone who stands as the pillar of strength for his wife, regardless of her on and off eccentric behaviour.”
People do have stage fright. Even he was nervous before entering the stage. “But after coming on stage the nerves ease out as my character took over and as I put my focus on my co-actor and not the audience. I’m a very confident actor; I had always been right from my childhood where as a teenager I danced on tabletops for the very first time in my song Pardesia, with a good dancer like Rakhi Sawant. I know what I can do with my craft. So I was nervous, but also confident enough,” he says.
