Saif Ali Khan Shares His Passions, Obsessions And Love For Mumbai

As Saif Ali Khan gets ready for his Netflix debut in Sacred Games he shares his passions, obsessions and love for Mumbai.

- Suhani Singh

Saif Ali Khan knows a thing or two about obsession. He instantly recalls Calvin Klein’s 1986 fragrance for men by the name, then mentions Captain Ahab from Moby Dick and begins to dig a bit deeper. “It is disproportionate and unhealthy by definition,” he says, perhaps dwelling on the media’s obsession with his youngest child, Taimur. “There is probably a fine line between being passionate about your work and being obsessed with something. If you are lucky, you can turn an obsession into a profession.”

Khan has managed to. From making his debut in 1993 with Parampara and hitting a career high with Dil Chahta Hai (2001) to becoming the romcom hero of 2000s and turning menacing in Omkara, Khan has quietly managed to sustain himself even as the others three Khans have dominated Bollywood. For once he is leading the pack as he stars in Netflix’s first Indian original Sacred Games, an adaptation of author Vikram Chandra’s Mumbai-set crime thriller of the same name. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, the show sees Khan play the troubled, honest cop Sartaj Singh, Nawazuddin Siddiqui as the gangster Ganesh Gaitonde and Radhika Apte as RAW agent Anjali Mathur. The show hits the site on July 6.

BECOMING SARTAJ

Doing a Hindi feature vis-à-vis a show that will be eight episodes long and accessible to almost 125 million subscribers of Netflix spread across 190 countries is a different ballgame altogether. Khan is excited by the possibilities of the fast-growing format which is changing the landscape of entertainment. “It is specifically aimed at the viewer,” says Khan, “you have to give him something edgier than normal, weirder than TV, uncensored and unfettered, and surreal to a level. Otherwise there’s no point doing it.”