Karan Tacker on Playing a Man Whose Life Ended in Mystery, Finding Fear in ‘Bhay’, and Searching for Love On-Screen

Fear, when done honestly, is never about what jumps out at you. It is about what follows you home. That idea sits at the heart of Bhay: The Gaurav Tiwari Mystery, and it is also what drew Karan Tacker to the series. This was not a conventional horror project to him, but a story about a man who spent his life walking into the unknown.

Tacker initially describes the show as a ‘paranormal biopic’, but then offers a more layered perspective. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a biopic, because when you say biopic, you’re trying to look the part, behave like the part and talk the part.” Bhay is instead inspired by the life and work of Gaurav Tiwari, the real-life paranormal investigator whose brief, intense career ended with a mysterious death at 32.

When the project first came to him, Tacker admits he knew little about Tiwari. “The first thing they asked me was, ‘Are you scared of horror?’” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’m petrified,’” he says with a laugh. The response was simple. Look up this name, Gaurav Tiwari, and call us back.

That late night Google search changed everything. “Here was a guy from a decent family who came to Bombay to become an actor. Then he went to the US, studied flying, became a pilot, had a paranormal incident that irked his curiosity, studied metaphysics at a church there, came back to India to practice it, and died a mysterious death at 32. I was like, wow. This is a banging story,” Tacker says.

Playing someone who once existed brings a weight of its own. Tiwari’s story is well-known, his death unresolved, and his family very much present. “There’s a sensitivity you carry when you’re playing a real person. His parents are still around. His wife is still around. You don’t want to disturb their state of being by doing something just for a gimmick,” Tacker says. 

That sensitivity shaped the show’s creative approach. From the start, the team decided they were not interested in chasing fear for effect. “We were very clear that we are not trying to do horror. Horror hasn’t been interestingly done in India for a very long time,” Tacker says.  Instead, Bhay wants to allow fear to emerge organically. “What he did was scary for a layman. If you get scared in the journey of his life, that’s a win for us. But we are not using every tool just to freak you out,” he says.

For Tacker, the project also became his most immersive experience as an actor. He joined early, long before the shoot, spending months in pre-production. “It wasn’t about coming on board, doing your 60 days and leaving. We were constantly building. Deciding tonality, deciding how it would be shot, deciding what it should feel like,” Tacker says.

Across Special Ops, Khakee and now Bhay, Tacker’s choices have resisted easy categorisation. Genre, he insists, has never been the deciding factor. “I’ve never really looked at a genre before doing a part. It’s always been the intrigue of the life of the character,” Tacker says. Special Ops was not about espionage but about relationships. Khakee was not about the uniform, but about the paradox of power and bureaucracy. “You are always trying to find characters that are far from you as a human being. That’s what excites you to get on set every day,” he adds.

Even as the show does well, Tacker is already thinking about what comes next. “It’s a very funny place. You’re promoting, shows are doing well, but you’re already hunting for the next script. You’re enjoying success and feeling like a struggling actor at the same time,” he says.

Asked what he is craving next, his answer is unexpected. “I really want to do a mature love story. I feel old enough now to bring a certain emotional maturity to it. Maybe the romance that’s missing in my real life... I’ll go and find it on screen,” he says with a laugh.