Ali Fazal Isn’t Chasing Stardom — He’s Building Something Better

It’s a rare quiet day in Ali Fazal’s life. No sets, no flights, no prosthetics. Somewhere between wrapping a film up and prepping for another, somewhere between being a new father and a slightly older actor, he’s thinking aloud, which is perhaps the best time to catch him.

Fazal is both certain and uncertain, sometimes in the same breath — a man at peace with not knowing, or at least, willing to circle the not-knowing until something resembling clarity arrives. “Oh, hell yeah,” he says, when asked if the so-called return of romance excites him. “There’s a clear void and people are longing for love stories, softer stories. I think there was a time when people were just angry and action was working, then comedy had its season. Everything comes and goes, but love stories are timeless — if they’re good, they work.”

There’s something in the way Fazal says that last part that tells you he believes it not just as an artiste, but as a viewer who has been waiting for something to land. “What Anurag Basu da has done,” he continues, speaking of Metro… In Dino (2025), “is break the rules a bit. There’s an old-school musical style, we don’t usually use that here, and suddenly we’re doing scenes on rhythm, in and out — that’s refreshing. It helps the narrative. The songs are nice.” There’s something childlike in Fazal’s wonder, a kind of marvelling at how something earnest still works. “For me, this has been a bit of a reacquainting with the box office. I’ve had a good digital run, I’ve been lucky in the West, but this felt like a cushion I needed. Basu da, lovely actors, ensemble cast. I hope the story grows. Right now, the hope is people walk into a theatre.” He pauses. “We’re really hoping people come to a theatre.”

When one asks if there’s a case to be made for emotional spectacle — that not every theatrical experience needs to be horror, action, or IMAX-certified mythmaking — he nods vigorously. “It’s high time,” he says. “Word of mouth is key. Families are scared to come out. It’s expensive. And then you have [tickets priced at] 99 [on] Tuesday. And it works. People show up in hordes. Why? Because the tickets are cheap. The answer is right there. Why does it have to be one day?” He asks this rhetorically, not a complaint, but a wish. “It’s not about making fewer films, it’s about access. Of course, spectacle brings people in. But for something like this, for romance, it’ll take both. Good laugh, good film, word of mouth, low fear. Families can watch this. I just don’t think many people know yet that they can.”

When the conversation tilts toward what is best described as “bankability” of artistes, the marketing lingo that governs theatrical fate, Fazal sounds half amused, half exasperated. “It’s hard to say, man,” he rues. “What even is bankable anymore? The narrative swings between a bankable face and a bankable script, sometimes just sheer luck. And I know this: a good story is a good story, but you have to sell it. There are very few faces who can really do that. Even they crash sometimes. What does that tell you?” His voice grows animated. “Imagine if someone said: for two weeks, no new releases. Just this one film. Let’s do an experiment. Let’s see what happens.”

Fazal’s oscillation between actor and producer feels restless but also rooted. As if he knows that his own career has lived in these experiments, these trial-and-error middle spaces. When asked what he thinks filmmakers see when they think of him, he laughs, caught off-guard by the question. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve failed to understand how I’m perceived. Lately I’ve felt this tug between the desire to work abroad and the need to be here. People thought I wasn’t even living in India till two years ago. But I was.” He talks about his shifting focus toward telling South Asian stories, about the world shrinking and subtitles opening new doors. “I think the focus is going to shift, you’ll see it. I was almost in two projects that were based on Indian books, by Indian writers, but backed by international productions.” He pauses. “And I keep coming back home, having this conversation with myself. I don’t know how to navigate it. I don’t have a box office here. And that matters. But outside India, it’s a different feeling. Sometimes there’s an ego death. And that’s okay. I’ll find a way.”

It’s this openness — to failure, to grey areas — that makes him a curious figure in a largely declarative business. When his last outing in theatres, Thug Life (2025), comes up, and is asked whether that unexpected blink-and-miss role felt like a misstep, he jumps in before the question is even complete. “Yeah,” he says with a laugh. “I got a lot of flak. I haven’t seen it. People keep asking why I did it. The answer’s simple: Mani Ratnam.” He says the name the way one might speak of a childhood hero. “It was a tiny role. But it was Mani sir. It happened. And yeah, people messaged me asking why I did this. And I don’t know. It’s okay. What do I do?” He smiles but does not deflect. “It was pleasant. I was welcomed. Mani sir, Kamal Haasan sir, the whole team was kind and sweet. That experience happened. Then I was released.” Ask if he feels shortchanged, he shrugs. “I haven’t seen it, but I know what stayed and what didn’t. Honestly, I wouldn’t question it. The story changed a lot in the making. That chapter’s closed. I hope I get to work more extensively with Mani sir again. Or with someone like Ravi K Chandran — he’s brilliant. Maybe in that sense, I feel I didn’t get to explore enough. But that’s why we started producing. These small reasons. We wanted to make cinema we like watching.”

Right now, for Fazal, all roads inevitably lead to Girls Will Be Girls (2024), which he produced with Richa Chadha. There’s a new streaming mandate that films must release theatrically before landing on platforms — a shift that has complicated the indie model. He sighs. “I don’t know if it’s an official mandate,” he says. “But when we sold Girls Will Be Girls, that was the question. We decided not to go theatrical, because we’d lose money. We wanted to pay our investors back. Thank God, we did.” He talks about the grind of international sales, territory by territory, and the looming threat of piracy. “There’s apparently an Android app that just leaks films the night before they release. People watch them. Everyone’s okay with it.” He sounds more puzzled than bitter. “This was supposed to be the era of access. And now it’s the thing we’re struggling with the most. We will find a way, I think. I’m excited to see what happens to Sitaare Zameen Par (2025) with the route that Aamir Khan has picked with its streaming release. There has to be a way.

As he winds down, one must ask what he’s most looking forward to with Mirzapur, the film. “Mirzapur is Mirzapur,” he says, with a knowing smile. “The world already exists. But it’ll be interesting to see how it translates on film. I’ve heard the script. I’m pretty pumped.” He is assured that it’s not veering too far from the show, not turning into some alien beast. “It stays true to its flavour. That’s important. The rest — we’ll see.”

Perhaps that’s the heart of the matter with Fazal, the belief that things must stay true to their flavour, that there’s no shame in small roles if the director is worth working with, no shame in waiting, in not being bankable, in admitting you haven’t quite figured it out, and yet moving forward anyway, producing anyway, showing up anyway. In a world obsessed with declaring arrival, he is content to keep becoming.

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