Crime caper Chupan Chupai has proved to be a sleeper hit. What seems to have worked in favour of this small-budget film with largely new faces (barring Ahsan Khan, Neelam Munir, Talat Hussain, and Sakina Simon) and a first-time director, is its racy script, amusing one-liners, crisp editing, and the much-publicised song, Sadqa. Even the harshest of critics have lapped up to it. Interestingly, Faizan Khawaja is one debutant who was missing in the entire publicity campaign of the film but he has been noticed big time.
Gulf News Tabloid! asked this young actor why he had kept out of the promotions, and he explained: “My character was supposed to be the ‘surprise’ element. Even the [film’s] official trailer shows only a single shot of me. Had I been involved [in the promotions], the purpose would be lost.
“Besides, I was shooting for two drama serials back to back, so I couldn’t join them for promotions.”
But Khawaja agreed that his absence had benefited him in a sense because his role carried a novelty value. He enters the film post-interval and wins over the audience with his cool-dude charm and pitch-perfect performance.
Not many people know that Khawaja’s launch pad on silver screen was going to be with a Bollywood movie, funnily titled Bankster, which also starred Naseeruddin Shah. He had signed on this film and shot for it much before Chupan Chupai came along. It was supposed to release alongside Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees. But in the aftermath of the Uri attack in September 2016, relations between India and Pakistan soured, and producer Zeenat Aman was pressurised by the extremist groups to either drop the Pakistan actor or pay up the penalty amount of Rs50 million (Dh2.87 million). “It’s an indie film, made on a very modest budget,” he said. “So the makers didn’t want to take the risk.”
Eventually, the film’s release was pushed to an unspecified date.
Khawaja is happy that Bankster shall finally be seeing the light of the day at the “end of February or beginning of March this year.
“I play a bank robber in the film,” he revealed, excitedly. “It is an action-oriented film, shot mostly in Mumbai and Budapest.”
Another lesser known fact about Khawaja is that he is so far the only Pakistani who attended a four years’ degree programme in acting at Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International in Mumbai. One of the guest coaches at the institute happened to be Shah. A couple of years later, he had bagged the film with the legendary Indian actor. “I felt so honoured. It was a dream come true,” he said.
During this while, he had begun work on television. In 2012, he moved to Karachi and inked the deal for two soaps. Till date, he has starred in “about 15 serials” that include hit plays like Love, Life Aur Lahore, Aik Thi Cinderella and Meri Laadli. He also produced a telefilm, Life Story, in which he tried his hand at playback singing too.
Khawaja is next due in a HUM TV play which is directed by Danish Nawaz, and stars Kinza Hashmi opposite him.
