Babil Khan on 'Logout,' the Scroll, and the Soul

There’s something about Babil Khan that makes you want to reach out and cover him with a blanket. Maybe it’s the eyes — liquid, searching, flickering with emotion that doesn’t look filtered, just felt. Maybe it’s the lineage. The phantom limb of loss that comes with being Irrfan’s son. When Babil made his screen debut in Qala (2022), he stepped into a collective mourning. We hadn’t healed yet. And here was a boy who looked like his father, moved like him, haunted the frame like him. A performance made all the more devastating because it didn’t feel like a performance at all.

Yes, he’s a nepo baby. But the public did something unusual with Babil; they rooted for him. They extended grace. They saw in him a rare earnestness, a softness in the algorithmic snark of stardom, it felt like something to be protected. But grace, like fame, is a fickle currency. Soon, that same vulnerability was recast as affectation. The gentleness he wore like skin became suspect. The boy who once seemed too pure for this world was suddenly “trying too hard.” There’s no winning. Not really.

Then Babil did what many don’t—he logged out. Not in the literal sense. But emotionally, spiritually, publicly. He pulled away from the discourse, stopped defending his tenderness, and started doing the work.

This is also the emotional core of Logout, the new ZEE5 screen thriller directed by Amit Golani, written by Biswapati Sarkar, and produced by Posham Pa Pictures' Sameer Saxena, Golani and Sarkar. Babil affectionately calls them the "Three Musketeers."

In Logout, Babil plays Pratyush Dua, an influencer known as “Pratman,” on the cusp of 10 million followers. When his phone is stolen, he spirals into a digital freefall. It blurs the line between self-worth, fame and farce. It’s a character study that often hits too close to home, and Babil — true to form — plays it with a strange, swirling energy. He’s erratic, exposed, endearing.

In this interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Babil talks to us about the terrifying elasticity of fame, the glitchy landscape of the new industry, the legacy of a father who never chased stardom, and the salvation of cinema. Along the way, he references Carl Jung and informs us that the average human attention span has plummeted to a measly eight seconds, and makes the case for reclaiming art from the scroll.

Edited excerpts:

When you first read the script of Logout, what was the one thing that made you say yes to this?

Honestly, it was at a time when I had no releases. Qala, my first film, had not released. So I went and auditioned for the film, and only after that did I get to read the script. It was an opportunity for me; not a luxury where I could be like, “Oh, I don’t want to do this film,” or “choose this film.” It was more like the film chose me rather than me choosing the film.

The first aspect is the part that it is such a juicy role, you know? I get an opportunity, before I even have my first release, through an audition, to really put myself out there as an actor.

The other aspect is that I got to look within myself and I could accept the things that I keep denying. Like the line between self-worth and external validation. The line between self-love and creating an image, attaching your identity to that, and that image being formed by the opinions of others. The difference between that and what that can do to the soul of a human being. Carl Jung has written about this. The journey from being validated externally to finding your self-worth within yourself, through your actions, through your thoughts, and not the opinions of others.

Tell us about shooting this, because it is not a conventional film in how it unfolds. It’s very intimate, very claustrophobic, and technically very strange because you’re doing all of this loaded emotional work, but there’s no one else in the room for so much of this film.

Yeah! I have had no formal acting training. So for me, suddenly, I couldn’t rely just on my instincts, just on my emotions. There was no space for improvisations. When I say space, I mean time. I could improvise within the time, but that time was so quick because the pacing of the film is such that I had to finish that dialogue on that beat. Which requires formal training, going to an acting school and learning the mechanics of it.

I got to trust myself much more through the process. Because when I stepped onto the set, and when I could do it without going to an acting school, I realised that I trusted my journey much more. Suddenly I found that, "Oh my God, maybe I’m meant to do this!"

Sometimes it takes training to land on your mark, and sometimes you land on your mark and you’re like, “How did I do this?”

Would you say that it was a fun challenge? Because for a large part of the film, you don’t have co-actors in the same space. Or does it get lonely?

It depends on how we define fun. For me, it was very emotionally taxing. It was a 26-day schedule, which we finished in 22 days because we were able to just finish 12 scenes a day.

I like that. I enjoy going into the depths of the character. He is anxious, he’s going through that panic, the suffering, the pain, the loss of identity. To stay in that for 22 days took a little bit of a toll on me. But I had a very supportive environment—my director, the writer, and of course, the producer. The three musketeers, I call them. It was a very supportive environment, where if I’ve had an extremely tough and extremely emotional day, they took the time out to make me laugh and send me home happy.

That’s so wholesome.

It is the journey. That’s why when I speak about acting, I hate speaking about myself. Because I genuinely think an actor’s performance is never their own. It is such a collaborative process. If the light lands wrong on you, your performance can go haywire. We say “we’re catching the light,” but honestly it’s a two-way process.

One thing that comes up a lot in this film is "undivided attention"— tell us about it. Do you think that, today, audiences will ever stop to watch again? Or are we just glancing now? What kind of cinema do you think can reclaim that undivided attention?

That’s a good question. It's a new perspective. Apparently, there is a new kind of cinema where it is made for people with short attention spans... where it’s like you can scroll and still watch.

Ambient viewing.

Yeah, ambient viewing. I'm very afraid of this ambient viewing content. Because I have grown up around films. I love watching films. But we scroll because we don’t want to be here—we just want to get away for a while and escape the reality for a bit. We keep scrolling and then that becomes an addiction.

I think if an individual can be aware of the ways that they escape reality — and maybe take some time and start with five minutes in a day to sit in silence with themselves, with all of ourselves, the pain, the anxiety, the tingling in the legs that comes from the anxiety— the physical and the emotional aspects— I think that awareness will eventually lead to a point where we would be able to watch entire films. But I don’t know. I really can’t predict the salvation of cinema.

Where do you find your stillness? Because even though your screen time is low, you’re surrounded by algorithms and headlines and chaos.

See, being an actor is a lifelong process, a journey. And being a celebrity? That’s a job. So I do that job, and then I take a break. I go scuba diving and I really disconnect. You can’t even reach me when I’m diving. My phone’s off for seven, eight, sometimes ten days.

That kind of rest — real rest — is so important. But we live in a society that makes us feel guilty for resting. Like hard work is the only way to succeed. That’s the biggest misconception, I think. Without rest, hard work becomes inefficient. We work so distracted. Even if you look at stats—our attention span right now, what is it? Not more than a bird’s.

No, it’s eleven seconds. Or maybe even less.

(Googles it.)

Oh my god, it’s 8.25 seconds now. That’s insane. It used to be 120 seconds! We’ve gone from humans to animals. What the hell!

That’s why viewership is down. People can't even read anymore. Eight seconds isn’t enough.

But giving up reading? That’s a fatal decision for humanity. Books… they change you in ways that are intangible. I can’t even describe how deeply a book can affect your life. But we’re moving further away from it.

Today it’s very easy to be everywhere and not be seen. Do you think this space has made art more disposable? And how do you ensure that your work isn’t just part of a scroll?

That’s the point — I can’t be sure of anything. I can only try. Try to be something new, something special that grabs attention. Because now, that’s what it is — I have to grab your attention. Earlier, people went to cinema for the experience. Now I have to pull you in just to get you there.

I used to make grand statements about art and society, but I realised — they were things beyond my control. The only thing I can control is my perception of art. What I’m willing to do, what I’m willing to sacrifice in myself to get your attention, so you’ll sit through a one hour 20 minute film in a cinema hall.

But times will change. Life will throw what it has to. It’s about how we adapt. How we perceive those changes — that’s what matters. Not trying to control the art.

What’s your relationship like with attention? Do you crave it? Do you resent it?

Oh yeah. Of course. I’ve finally figured it out. When I was young, both my parents were working. My mother is a writer, my father was an actor. They were always away. I was constantly craving attention. And in those first six years, your brain gets conditioned. You don’t even realise you’re carrying that conditioning into adulthood — this constant need for external validation.

You have to reflect. You have to be honest about the darkness within you that you usually deny. Only then can you learn the truth about yourself. So yes, I do crave attention. But now, because I know the reason why, I can observe it. I can watch that craving rather than reacting to it.

It’s like fear. Like when you go on stage—it's terrifying. But if you sit with that fear, breathe through it, and watch it… the fear doesn’t go away. But how you look at it changes.

Everyone talks about wanting to protect the purity in you. But do you ever worry that this vulnerability—this openness—is being consumed as content?

Yeah. I did worry about that. I came into the limelight without training. Not acting training — I mean training for the limelight. I didn’t know how to navigate it. After Baba passed, all the attention just came to me. I didn’t ask for it. I was studying in London when it happened.

I just was myself. I wore my heart on my sleeve. But what that did was — I offered my throat to the opinions of others. That blurred the line between external validation and self-worth. I started to get hurt by the breaking of my image. I depended on it.

When I got trolled for saying sorry… at first, I laughed at the memes. But then they dragged my father into it. And that broke me. For the last three years, I’d been trying — with all honesty — to give back to the people who supported us when we lost him. It never felt like a personal loss; it felt collective. When that was used to troll… when they used a scene from Madaari (2016) of him crying over his son and added my photo underneath saying, “Irrfan looking down at what his son is doing to his legacy” — that shattered me.

It made me realise that I can’t control anyone’s opinion. All I can control is my own actions, my own perception. That was my moment of growing up. Realising that if I want to give back, I have to protect my purity. Because once it’s polluted, the art is contaminated.

I’ve learned what to say and what to keep for myself. I used to share everything. But we live in a world where opinions are shared without the burden of identity. And if I want to survive this and still give back, I need to protect what’s mine.

I’ll be honest—during that trolling, so many people fought for me. People who had no reason to. And that motivated me. I told myself: I’ll grow, I’ll evolve, and I’ll create something to give back to them. That’s when I realised: sometimes silence is more powerful. Inaction is also a form of action. My fear hasn’t gone away. I still get terrified. But now I have the strength to be terrified and still express what I want to. If I want to write a poem and share it — even if I get trolled — I’ll do it. Because that’s what creation is. You create through what affects you.