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Rohman Shawl recalls being dropped from ‘a big film’ in 2017 and that deeply affected him as ‘nothingness’ suddenly engulfed him.
Rohman Shawl played the antagonist in Sivakarthikeyan-Sai Pallavi’s Amaran.
Rohman Shawl began his career as a model. After trying his luck in the acting world, he decided to take a hiatus until Sivakarthikeyan and Sai Pallavi’s Amaran happened. In an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, Rohman spills the beans on why he took the decision to take a break from acting and go back to being a model. “In 2017, I was cast in a big film and they selected me after I gave an audition. After a month post that, I was told to meet the director. As I was getting ready, the casting director called me and told me that there are some changes and that he would call me,” he recalls.
The phone call – coupled with a certain perception that comes with being a model – affected Rohman so deeply that he finally made the big decision. “But that call never came. I thought that I’ve made it and then suddenly, there was nothingness. Bahot bada dhakka laga tha mujhe. It affected me because I was already coming with the baggage that models can’t be good actors. And then, I started drifting away from films and concentrated solely on modelling,” he states.
Shedding light on how his favourite model-turned-actors like Muzammil Ibrahim, John Abraham, Arjun Rampal and Milind Soman too battled this notion, Rohman says, “There has always been an assumption that pretty looking people can’t make it as actors because one can’t get past their good looks [to focus on their talent]. A lot of them had a lot of potential and they were good actors but the label of a good-looking model never left them. It happens till this date. It affected me as well and that’s what I wanted to break with Amaran.”
For the unversed, Amaran saw him playing a dreaded terrorist and Rohman admits that he treated the film as a litmus test that would determine his longevity in the film industry. “What really appealed to me about the film was that the director was looking at me as an antagonist – as someone who’s the opposite of who I am. I wanted to capitalise on it, else I would always remain a good-looking model who can’t act. I knew that if I failed, my career as an actor would be over,” he remarks.
Talking about how Amaran ‘completely changed’ him as a person, Rohman elaborates, “The kind of love and response that I received gave me a lot of validation and that’s something that I was seeking as an actor. And I can’t put that happiness into words. Amaran and Azaadi [his recently released short] are two very different films and through these stories, I experienced the whole spectrum of life – from being a protector in Azaadi to a destroyer in Amaran. I feel very lucky and grateful to god, my audience and my directors for taking me in these projects. I hope more and more directors keep casting me in their stories. I’m ready to do the hard work.”