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Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui has always been quite candid about his struggles while growing up, his NSD days and his relationship with his father. During a recent interview, Nawaz shared some more stories from his childhood and how his father’s certain habits and idiosyncracies shaped him as an individual.
The actor made an appearance on Raj Shamani’s podcast to talk about his career and personal life. While talking about his school days, Nawaz segued into talking about his father and said that he never realised that there was something wrong in their relationship until he moved to the big cities. He said, “I realised after coming to the city that fathers can also love their children. Because where I came from, that is not the kind of relationship I had with my father. We used to talk a lot, but I think I took him for granted a lot of the time. This is something I realised much later in life after he passed away.”
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He talked about his father’s affinity towards lying and said, “Whenever I would tell him about any country that I visited for shooting, he would always say, ‘Waha toh mai bhi gaya tha’ (I have also been there). Then when I used to ask him to describe the place, he would use vague terms like, ‘It’s very neat and clean.’ Then I would ask him about his passport, and he would always say that it must be lying around somewhere.”
Nawaz said that his father had a sort of chip on his shoulder and that he always wanted to prove that no matter what the son is doing, the father has already been down that road. “He always wanted to show me that whatever I am doing, he has already done it. I remember that when Amitabh Bachchan sahab was in the Parliament, my father would visit Delhi, and upon his return he used to tell me that he met him. He would describe how he told Bachchan Sahab to take care of his health,” said Nawaz.
But Nawaz admitted that until they realised that their father was lying, his stories would give them confidence. Enough confidence to go and talk to anyone without thinking that they weren’t equals. He said, “Because of his habit of lying, I used to think that we were some big shots. We regained our confidence, and we would never be in awe of someone else because of what we thought about our father.”
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However, the actor revealed that no matter what stories his father would cook inside the house, he was always a very honest man with the rest of the world, a quality which, according to the actor, was one of the reasons for his father’s downfall. He said, “Outside of that, he was a very honest man, and that is why he lost a lot of business deals and faced a lot of downfall. He failed a lot in his life. Looking at him, I used to think that I can’t end up like that. I wanted to work hard, and I knew that I didn’t want to live like my father.”
Finally, he said that even though he never wished to be like his father, some things seeped into him unwillingly. “I still inherited a lot of insecurities and anger issues from him. I took care of the latter because Mumbai does that to you. It was here where I remember looking at young people and couples living it up, while I was going from office to office to get some work.”
He continued, “One day someone asked me what I did for a living; I told him that I was an actor, and he said, ‘You don’t look like one.’ Now I realise that I reached this stage without being a conventionally good-looking person; just imagine how far I could have gone if I was good-looking, or maybe I wouldn’t have even reached here.”
Nawazudddin was last seen in the Aditya Sarpotdar directorial Thamma, also starring Ayushmann Khurrana, Rashmika Mandaana and Paresh Rawal.
