Panchayat's Prahlad Cha aka Faisal Malik says: Popularity scares me; I still have a lot to prove
Actor Faisal Malik, best known as Panchayat's deputy pradhan Prahlad ‘Cha’ Pandey, says: ‘yeh jo ho raha hai, sapne ke barabar hai’.
Showered with love for his role of grief-stricken Prahlad Cha in the new season of the OTT series Panchayat, actor Faisal Malik is living the dream, but he is scared of the popularity.
“Never in my life had I imagined that such a thing would happen in my life. Yeh jo ho raha hai, sapne ke barabar hai! Such things never even came into my thoughts, and this is happening for the second time in my life – first in season two and now in the third one. So, I am extremely happy about this, but it makes me nervous as well,” says the actor who shot to fame while playing a cop in Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).
Malik says, “Popularity scares me as it is for that character (deputy pradhan Prahlad Pandey) and not for Faisal Malik! Both are very different things. As an actor abhi bahut kaam karna aur prove karna baaki hai. Now, one big challenge is to make every character very different from what’s done as industry people typecast you in similar roles and characters. Now, I need to prove it in other roles that I do!”
And he is already cautious about the choice of roles. “Mehnat aur karni padegi prove karne ke liye. I am playing a cop in my next series Tribhuvan Mishra - CA topper, a finicky watchman in the film Sab First Class, a computer science teacher in the show Dating Shating and Dean in the mini-series Namacool. Besides, I am playing a good character in a film Hanuman Bhaiya which is incidentally also the title role,” says the actor who was seen playing a negative role in the Malayalam film Ariyippu (2022) now streaming in Hindi as Declaration.
Malik admits that his body shape too helped him bag this role in Panchayat and made his character popular, but he wants to become fitter now. “One common thing with Prahlad and Faisal is that dono bahut aalsi hain. I am not looking forward to becoming slim but fitness ke taraf thoda dhyan zyada dena padega as mehnat zyada ho rahi hai. Bahut mushkil hai par thoda khana-peena kam karna padega,” says the actor on his recent visit to Lucknow.
