In 2017, alongside hovering near the hero’s shoulder, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub played a lead role. However, not too many people watched Samee...
In 2017, alongside hovering near the hero’s shoulder, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub played a lead role. However, not too many people watched Sameer, in which Ayyub’s character infiltrates a suspected Islamic terrorist organisation. The movie was poorly distributed too, Ayyub pointed out.
“I knew it was a serious political film not likely to make the audience go crazy,” he recalled. “And the question of feeling bad doesn’t arise when it didn’t even get a proper release.”
Ayyub’s latest project has fared much better. In the SonyLIV web series A Simple Murder, Ayyub is both hero and anti-hero, the driver of a plot that revolves around coincidences and fate. As Manish, a loser who is not only mistaken for a contract killer but also bungles his first assignment, Ayyub displays the full range of his acting talent.
Manish is “a jumpy character whose attitude changes with every scene,” Ayyub observed. “There are shades to his character graph. It’s not something I had played before, and that got me excited.”
Saddled with character roles for years, Ayyub has mastered the ability to stand out. The National School of Drama-trained actor made his debut in No One Killed Jessica (2011). Ayyub memorably played a character modelled...
