The new season of Suno Chanda has been the talk of the town. The second installment has introduced us to a couple of new faces, but one who has remained fan favourite throughout the episodes aired so far is none other than Raza Talish’s character, Mithoo. He is playing the son of Arjumand Rahim’s character, Pari, both of whom hail from a village in Gujrat.
Though parrots are anything but naïve, Mithoo has a childlike innocence to his character. He is a mama’s boy and an eager beaver who wants to learn the trades of the city and be like everyone else. Many of our readers may not know, Raza is Aehsun Talish’s son who is the director of Suno Chanda series. Something Haute caught up with Raza to get to know him more and delve into his stint as Mithoo.
Mithoo may have been new to Karachi but Raza has been part of the industry for quite some time as an assistant director. He is a graduate of National College of Arts and has done his bachelors in film-making. You may have caught a glimpse of him in Iqra Aziz, Shahzad Sheikh and Imran Ashraf starrer Tabeer.
“Yes, I started my career as an assistant director and I’m still one. It’s just that I’m focusing more on acting these days,” Raza said talking about his foray into the industry. “Tabeer was my first on-screen appearance but I would call it more of a soft debut as I didn’t get a lot of margin to explore my acting in it. I was new to being in front of the camera so I was very confused. Tabeer was more like an introduction for me,” he added.
Read:Â Decoding Suno Chanda season 2: Is it living up to expectations?
   Raza Talish & Aehsun Talish
Interestingly, at the very beginning of his acting journey, Raza is one of the few who acknowledge their failures. “As an actor, I consider Tabeer a failure in terms of my acting career. I believe that it’s only failures that can take you to success so I learnt a lot from those ten days of shooting. I realized my mistakes and I try my best to overcome them,” he said.
Moving on to the most debatable question of nepotism, after all he is the son of a well-known director. What are the pressures that come with it?
“Being the director’s son makes it tough. There are expectations and some of them you probably can’t meet. Somehow if you manage to meet those expectations, then people expect more. And it’s just not about my dad, my grandfather — Agha Talish — was also a renowned actor of his times. I have just stepped in and there’s so many expectations that this pressure might just kill me. Handling and tackling this pressure has shaped me; not just in terms of acting, but also my personality too,” he said.
Also read:Â Is Suno Chanda getting a third season?
Raza has garnered such an overwhelming response for Mithoo that the actor was unable to give words to his feelings. He loves talking about Mithoo so we asked him how he prepared for such a well-executed role?
“I created a crescendo in the character’s arc. In the initial stages from episode 1 to 8, you will see that Mithoo is dumb. He has just arrived in a mega-city and is all wide-eyed; confused in his body language and vocal tone. After episode 9, Mithoo gets a hang of the city; usko sheher ki hawa lag gai hai and his approach towards everything is changing. All this while, I had to make sure that his innocence remains intact as that is his unique trait,” Raza said.
“As the story progresses towards episode 15, Mithoo will become over-smart as it happens when an innocent person gets overburdened with information. Towards the wrap, you will see that Mithoo will become a little subtle and smart,” the actor explained.
  Raza Talish and Sabeena Farooq
Raza gave all the credit of his witty one-liners and quirky dialogues to the writer of the play, Saima Akram Chaudhry, but he agrees that they improvise a lot. “She gives us margin in the script along with those punch lines. At the end of the day every actor needs to add his flavour into the script. As far as Mithoo is concerned, in every scene you will hear him say the line ‘mein batata hoon’… that’s my addition!”
After the interesting interaction between Mithoo and Maina (Sabeena Farooq) in recent episodes, we are eager to know more about their story.
“There’s obviously a Mithoo and Maina track. I would like to mention that we started the shoots with Mithoo and Maina scenes. Sabeena has done a brilliant job and she has helped me to discover and develop Mithoo,” he added.
   Raza Talish with Nadia Afgan
Talking about his favourite character amongst the cast, he was all praises for Nadia Afgan who plays Shahana. “She is our backbone and undoubtedly the queen of Suno Chanda,” Raza said.
Towards the end of the interview, we asked him the burning question: where will we get to see him next?
“I have been offered a couple of things but I have not replied to them. Right now I can’t shift my focus from Mithoo. This is my dream come true and I need to complete one dream and then even plan on thinking about the other. Anything that’s in pipeline for me is on hold till Eid until Suno Chanda 2 ends and then I will think about it,” Raza concluded.
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