Aamir Ali: Time has come for me to enter a new zone in my career

Though actor Aamir Ali’s presence on screen was missing in 2022, he doesn’t worry about being forgotten by the audience. “I don’t care. In fact, I have been away from TV for years now. If I had any stress about people forgetting me, I would do TV again,” he shares.

Ask him the reason for maintaining distance from television, and the 45-year-old shares that he felt it was essential for him to come out of the mold of “being just a television actor”. He adds, “I have been fortunate enough to be part of eight TV shows and play a lead. [role] in them. I have done reality shows as well. However, I feel that time has come for me to enter a new zone in my career.

Ali, who is now concentrating on OTT as he wants to give the platform “a serious shot”, shares that he was busy filming a number of films and web shows in the last year, that would be released in 2023. But the transition from TV to other platforms has not been easy for the Faraaz (2022) actor.

He recalls how filmmakers often said things like ‘my mother is big fan of you, my sisters really like your show’, but when it came to casting him in the projects, they felt reluctant. “I think this happened primarily because they had seen me in a certain way… in a certain character. There is a particular way you work in TV and it’s different from OTT,” he shares.

Recalling one such incident, he adds, “Once, there was a talk going on about a show and they wanted to cast me in it. But then someone asked ‘Aamir Ali, woh TV waala?’ And, the next thing I got to know was that I was not part of the show.”

That was another reason why Ali decided to stay away from TV. “Initially ‘you are TV star’ was a serious problem and I had to take a break from TV to make them (casting agents) realize that ‘I am here to stay’. So, right now, I am not a TV actor but just an actor who is willing to experiment…to do everything,” he wraps up.