Danish Iqbal on playing Dawood Ibrahim in ‘Dhurandhar’: Didn’t know that my character was Bade Sahab

MUMBAI: The mystery around who is Bade Sahab and who is playing the shadowy character had gripped audiences since they saw Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar and its follow-up Dhurandhar: The Revenge has given the answer — the man is none other than underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, portrayed by actor Danish Iqbal.

The revelation came as a surprise even to the actor himself who said even though he knew about his role of Ibrahim, the man held responsible for the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts and numerous other terror incidents in India, but was never told that the character was actually Bade Sahab.

“I got my Eidi a little early. IBut when only a few weeks were left before the film’s release, somewhere I started to feel that maybe Dawood Ibrahim’s character itself could be Bade Sahab,” he told PTI in an interview.

In “Dhurandhar”, Bade Sahab was the unseen but omnipresent force — controlling Lyari’s crime lords, ISI handlers, senior police officers and political fixers, while remaining entirely off-screen.

Since speculation around who Bade Sahab truly was had been rife on and offline with names like Salman Khan and Emraan Hashmi doing the rounds.Iqbal said that following the character’s reveal, audience curiosity shifted towards how Ibrahim looks and sounds now, rather than the person behind the don persona.

“The way everything was created, the world of that character when people saw it, they forgot about which actor it was. They started focusing on the character itself.”The sequel charts Mazari’s rise in the Karachi underworld while tracing the origins of the man behind the cover.

Indian filmmakers have long been fascinated by Ibrahim, each offering their own take on the don on screen.

One of the most portrayed figures in Hindi cinema, Ibrahim has been depicted both directly and through inspired characters across films such as Ram Gopal Varma’s “Company”, Anurag Kashyap’s “Black Friday”, where Vijay Maurya portrayed him by name.

And that is the beauty that when a character is properly brought to life on screen, people appreciate the art more rather than glorifying the personality of the actor. They start liking the character.

“People were really interested in knowing who is going to playSahab rather than what Bade Sahab is going to do in the film. Sometimes one actor’s name would come up, sometimes another actor’s name would come up. Many times I also wondered who was playing this character.”