If you still haven’t seen Asim Abbasi’s Cake, then you must have been living under a rock. The hit family drama made a mark in Pakistani cinema last year, became the country’s entry into Oscars 2018 and gained momentum worldwide. It was nothing short of a hit.
The film, starring Adnan Malik, Aamina Sheikh and Sanam Saeed, has finally released on Netflix and Malik took to Instagram to share how he got into his character, Romeo, in the film.
“Romeo had been written so well that I wanted to do full justice to the role. Asim and I had a lot of discussion about Romeo’s person, history and psyche,” he wrote on Instagram.
“We created a backstory for him. I spent a lot of time with people similar to Romeo in environs that were frequented by them but were totally alien to me. (Including a day with a Christian male nurse on the job and a day in central prison in Karachi, to try and envision what his time in prison must have been like. The cramped quarters, claustrophobia and smell of stale, watery daal on a steel plate stayed with me),” Malik added.
“I remember the first day when I wore his wardrobe, donned the moustache, and walked down the street near a commercial market. I noticed that people engaged with me very differently,” Malik said when recalling his first day on set.
Malik described how creating the character wasn’t just about the way he walked or the way he talked. It was all about creating his persona, his presence, how he would look, what he would wear and how his hair would be styled. From the pastel coloured bell bottomed pants, to the checkered shirt to the cut in his eyebrow, no detail was spared.
The end result was proof that a lot of time, sweat and blood had gone into creating the role. Hats off to the team and Adnan Malik for making Romeo a success.