Zahan Kapoor is ready to leave his soft-boy era

Name: Zahan Kapoor

Profession: Actor

Location: Mumbai, India

Why you should know him: Kapoor made his film debut with Hansal Mehta’s Faraaz (2022) and was most recently seen on Netflix’s Black Warrant, which has spent five weeks on the streaming platform’s Top 10 Shows list. Currently, he’s in Aditya Rawal’s play Siachen, a survival drama about three Indian soldiers stranded on the highest battlefield in the world.

If his last name didn’t give it away, he belongs to Bollywood’s Kapoor family: “I’m uniquely positioned in the sense that there’s lineage and legacy, but I grew up outside the immediate sphere of the film industry. My mum [Sheena Sippy] is a photographer, my dad [Kunal Kapoor] is a filmmaker. I’m blessed to have grown up in an atmosphere that was really immersed in art and culture, and I know how much of a privilege it is to be in an environment that leans so positively towards anything artistic and cultural.”

He didn’t always want to be an actor: “If you’d have asked me if I wanted to be an actor as a teen, I’d have scoffed and said, “No way.” Throughout my adolescence, I was really interested in horse riding. I played polo and considered doing that for the rest of my life, but I also loved drawing and the act of creation. I discovered what I wanted to do most was to learn how to tell stories on film. So, at 14, I made a short film with a friend. I learned how to use a camera, and my dad taught me how to edit. I started working at 16 and then pretty much full-time at 18 as an assistant at production houses, working on big-budget ad films. I was also doing indie-level stuff on my own—making fashion promos for my friends’ brands, promo videos for Prithvi Theatre, and music videos here and there. Then, I transitioned to working in film production. In tandem, I was encouraged to learn about what it is to work with an actor. I was assisting theatre director Sunil Shanbag, who encouraged me to participate in his workshop. That was one of the early sparks for me to be able to think about taking acting a bit more seriously.”

He swears by learning on the job: “I didn’t pursue formal academic training because I really liked the idea of getting my hands dirty as opposed to being confined to an institution. Thankfully, my parents, too, were not people who demanded a degree, and I had a lot of opportunities. I’m HSC, 12th pass, and that’s it. But I still study and I’m reading and learning all the time. I like to think I curated my own education and consider I’ve done like a 10-year PhD in this homeschool approach, where I did workshops, observed and absorbed plays—a lot of it is theatre-centric. Filmmaking was production-centric, so I could understand every department. One of the first things I did in theatre was to be an understudy in a play called Time Boy by Makarand Deshpande around 2015. I was part of the rehearsals but didn’t do any of the shows. Eventually, I did lights. I learned what it meant to design lights for the play, operate them on a dimmer board, and how to work in tandem with the whole production. All of it became my knowledge base.”

He went through a regular audition to nab the lead in Black Warrant: “I was told about the show by casting director Mukesh Chhabra’s office. I only knew it was based on the book, and that Vikram Sir [Vikramaditya Motwane] was attached to it. I was really kicked by the idea of working with him because I had watched Jubilee only a few months before that and was blown away by it. I did an audition and got called back. Then they said the director wanted to meet me. I had a million questions for him, so we spoke at length. At the end of the meeting, I still didn’t know if I’d got the part because he just didn’t tell me, and I was dying to know. I got the phone call and official email two days later.”

And he didn’t celebrate getting the role: “I feel anxious about getting my hopes and expectations up for this stuff because I care about it so deeply. So, I try not to over-celebrate anything. I just told my family and maybe one or two friends at the time. I’m working on it because I’ve realised it’s important to mark these moments or they just pass you by.”

The moustache in Black Warrant… is my real moustache. I would shave before going to the set every morning. I’m very cool and old-school like that, so I shave with a classic safety razor. I had a little brush that I’d lather up soap with and I would shape it myself. It was meditative.”

A fun fact: “I burnt through three pairs of the brown policewala shoes while shooting. There was so much gravel and walking on set that the soles kept getting worn out. I wanted to steal something once we wrapped, but I was given a couple of things by the art team. One was my suspension letter from episode one and a beautiful old-school Tihar jail ID card, which has a photograph of me in uniform and a stamp on it.”

His workout routine is self-taught and very offbeat: “It’s called rope flow. I discovered it online and taught myself how to do it via YouTube tutorials. It was created by this guy called David Weck, who is also the inventor of the Bosu ball. It definitely has a learning curve to it, but it’s really cool once you pick it up. God bless mankind for the internet and putting information out there.”

His watchlist is no different from yours: “I’m slacking so badly. I’ve not managed to get on the wagon on so many things. I haven’t watched season 2 of Paatal Lok yet and I’m dying to watch it. There’s The Mehta Boys, which came out on Prime Video recently. A dear friend of mine with whom I’ve been working the past 15 years is the DOP of the film. And I’ve heard Severance is incredible. Even Vikram Sir recommended it to me saying it’s masterful.”

His greatest vice is also similar to yours: “One of the last things I’m trying to battle among my vices is social media. It’s a tricky one because it’s entertainment, information, current events, and also inspiration. I have a timer on Instagram, but I ignore it—it’s horrible.”

His latest crush: “I’ve been fangirling over Doechii hard these past eight months and it’s amazing to see how she’s on this meteoric rise. Her showmanship at the Grammys, her expression in fashion, her taste, and her identity, her attitude… it’s very impressive and inspiring.”

You’ll be seeing him next on the stage and on screens: “We have two shows of Siachen in Delhi on March 1. I want to do another play this year if I can. Then, there are a couple of things that were shot even before Black Warrant. One is an Amazon web series called Bandwaale, which is a really lighthearted, silly, and emotional coming-of-age story. Shalini Pandey plays the lead. I have another short film that was made two years ago. It’s now part of an anthology that will release on Doordarshan’s new OTT platform. The subject matter is very experimental and has a lot of mental health themes and exotic adventure.”

The kind of roles he’d like to take up in the future: “I’m deeply interested in relationships. Even with Black Warrant, the strength of the show was that it became more about relationships than anything else. Maybe something that’s not as dark and stressful. I would like to do some comedy, to be romantic and fuzzy, or an action-oriented role. I’m being given a lot of soft-boy stuff right now, which I’ll roll with. There’s time, I’d like to believe, and I’m here for a long time.”