More than a decade after he burst into the scene as an antagonist spilling coolness and charm in Mardaani, Tahir Raj Bhasin brings allure and intensity to his villain act in Season 2 of Special Ops. The spy franchise, led by Kay Kay Menon’s uber-cool Himmat Singh and created by Neeraj Pandey, is now streaming on JioHotstar, and has met with praise. t2 caught up with Tahir for a chat.

Special Ops 2 as well as your performance has come in for a lot of praise. You are no stranger to accolades though...

I am on top of the world! When you join a franchise which already has such a large audience base, you are stepping into big shoes. There is a responsibility on your shoulders to not let the audience, the industry and the critics down. That was definitely there at the back of my mind.

When I read the script, saw the locations and the edit, I knew that they had knocked it out of the park. Normally, there is a Season 2 curse... if Season 1 of a series does well, the audience is skeptical about the second season. Conventionally, the track record is that it goes down (from one season to the next). But to reverse that trend and to be part of the team that did that is incredibly humbling.

It was a complex character to play and that people have loved ‘The Collector’ (aka Sudheer Awasthi, his character) and called it ‘unusual’ is very rewarding. It shows that it has managed to connect with the audience in the way that it was intended to.

You have always referred to your antagonist in your debut film Mardaani as an ‘anti-hero’ as opposed to an outright villain. How will you describe The Collector?

It is great that you brought up Mardaani because it has been 10 years since I played that character. When I first heard about The Collector, it was the opening scene that was narrated to me — his introduction where he sits and listens to classical music. That, in itself, felt like a clue towards his uniqueness because it is an unlikely introduction for an antagonist.

What drew me to the part was that he was stylish and charming, but he also had an intensity to him, and that he was a rebel with a cause. He wasn’t being the bad guy for the sake of being a bad guy. There was a philosophy that he believed in and what he did drove that philosophy. There are these philosophical gems that he keeps dropping in his dialogues, which the audience has picked up on. There are moments from his childhood that are shown and you get to see what makes him the way he is. It was interesting to play a part that is so layered.

Was being on a Neeraj Pandey set everything you had imagined it to be?

To me, his work blends realism and style and I relate to that because that is the form of acting that I bring to a project. What I had envisioned and what I got was a man of precision and clarity. When you are operating on a set of the scale of Special Ops 2 — the number of locations, the dramatic dynamics and the physical shoot in itself — you have to have a captain of the ship who has immense clarity like him. He is a man of few words, but after a few days of shooting with him, I managed to decode his language a bit. I was really fortunate to have a chance to work with him.

Special Ops S1 was one of those shows that made a huge impact when it came out during the early days of the pandemic. What was your impression of it when you watched it?

I remember being amazed that an Indian show on an Indian platform had achieved this level of skill. What drew me to the show even then — as it does now — is that it kept it very real. In spy fiction, the tendency sometimes is to go over the top. By real, I mean that he gets the nuances of interpersonal dynamics and politics in the office space really well. What has always struck me is that they have managed to blend the scale of the action and production and keep it entertaining, but grounded at the same time.

According to you, what makes Kay Kay Menon the perfect choice for the role of Himmat Singh? What were your biggest learnings from working with him?

Going head to head with Kay Kay was a big compliment for me. But what the audience often doesn’t realise is that our scenes are shot in isolation and you finally see it come together in the edit. It has been some time from when we shot the show to when we released it, so even I am watching it as an audience member now. To see The Collector and Himmat Singh together has been amazing, with the audience response being that we complement each other.

I spent time with Kay Kay and his calmness and patience is something that you can imbibe a lot from. He is like that as a person and that also shows in his performances. You have to be centred as a person to lend authenticity to a character like Himmat Singh rather than try and portray something that you are not.

You have done a fair bit of action in Special Ops 2. How else did this series stretch you as an actor?

To begin with, there is the mental pressure of going on to a set of that scale and to be told: “Okay, we are now flying to Budapest and shooting for a few hours there. Then we are going to Tbilisi... and then shooting at a giant dam where the temperature will be 5°C”. When you are shooting a series, it is not always done in a linear fashion. So to be handling something of that scale definitely makes me better equipped as an actor, as well as psychologically.

As I said, this is a part that is charming and intense. One of my favourite lines is where he meets the AI scientist (played by Arif Zakaria) and tells him: ‘We are both into cybersecurity... we are just on opposite sides.’ That defines who he is — part gangster-part tech tycoon... and playing a character like that has definitely added to who I am as an actor and as a person.

It has been a good few years for you in the OTT space as well as in films. You lead a solid franchise like Yeh Kaali Kaali Aankhein. Is there a goal over the next few years?

I am very proud to have built a body of work. I have been fortunate to work with some incredible directors, whether it was the late Pradeep Sarkar in Mardaani, Nandita Das in Manto, Nitesh Tiwari in Chhichhore, Kabir Khan in 83 and now Neeraj Pandey. This is a dream list to have for an actor. If I were to go back 10 years and meet the guy who came to Bombay wanting to act, he would be just overwhelmed if I placed this list in front of him today. There is also pride in the fact that it is self made.

My mindset right now is to lead with patience because in the short time that I have been in this industry, I have realised that quality over quantity has always paid off for me. It is a very interesting time in the industry because only when things are changing and there is a period of flux, is when experiments can be done and new stories be told.

It is amazing for me to be at a cusp where I get to work in both cinema and OTT, and the audience accepts me as both a hero as well as an antagonist. I hope for more lead parts that are disruptive.

What can we expect from your next?

I have just finished shooting an interesting mystery thriller for Netflix that co-stars Parineeti Chopra. I had never done a mystery show and it was something I was very excited to get into. We shot in Chail and in Shimla. Rensil D’Silva is directing the show and Siddharth P. Malhotra is producing it. I am looking forward to it.

You started life as a young journalist with a prominent news channel. I happened to see an archived clip of you as a reporter recently and you seemed to be such a natural. What was that experience like and has it helped you in your skills as an actor?

It was a big training ground for me. I was in college and a part of theatre groups, I would go to acting classes and workshops. I am from Delhi and I started working at a news channel at that time. I started as an intern and I worked there for a year. To be part of a buzzing newsroom was exciting. I was sent for a lot of different assignments — sometimes it was a crime story, at other times a medical one, or education or city migration — and I got to meet a lot of different people. It was a period of growth and learning. Without it, I don’t think I would have been the person I am today.