‘World on Fire’ star Ahad Raza Mir says South Asian characters ‘fleshed out properly’

Pakistani-Canadian actor Ahad Raza Mir shared that he was glad South Asian characters were given their due in BBC’s ‘World on Fire’. He shared this during a conversation with Variety this week.

Mir’s show, a WWII drama ‘World on Fire’, just finished airing a second season, pulling in more than 3 million viewers following its debut earlier this month.

Created by Peter Bowker, season one premiered in 2019 and dealt with the war in Western Europe. In season 2, the action shifted to the North African part of the war where one of the protagonists is Lieutenant Rajib Pal of the British Indian Army, played by Mir.

Mir said that sometimes South Asian characters do get sidelined, but in ‘World on Fire’ it has been “fleshed out properly.”

“In this series, they really did give importance to it and I think there’s still more room for other characters and other people to join, I would say, if it goes on to do another season,” Mir was quoted as saying by Variety.

“I learned so much history from doing this show that I actually myself had no idea about. There was the British Indian Army and they served. I didn’t really, to be honest, know the details of how they were treated, what they went through.

“At the same time, I understand that there’s films like ‘Dunkirk’ and ‘1917’ that didn’t really play to the South Asian roles there — I don’t think they took that as an opportunity at all. But I think what ‘World on Fire’ has done is it has decided, ‘We’re going to tell everyone’s story.’ And that that’s one of the reasons I’m so proud to be part of this show.”

Meanwhile, Bowker told Variety that one of the objectives of season 2 was to look at the conflict from multiple global perspectives, including that of India. Some 2.5 million South Asians fought as part of the British Indian Army in WWII. Director Christopher Nolan was accused in India of ignoring this in his film ‘Dunkirk,’ while Sam Mendes’ ‘1917’ featured a solitary Sikh soldier.

Mir said he was terrified over the filming process due to the technicalities involved.

“I was terrified to begin with,” he was quoted as saying to Variety.

“There was a lot of running around, and a lot of panic because we dealt with a lot of explosions. And doing that level of pyrotechnics and stuff was a first for me. So I didn’t have to act much when it came to the fear and the sweat on my face.

“Peter has created real characters that feel real, and each character gets the importance that they deserve.”

Mir, however, said the learning came on-set.

“Most of my learning came from actually being on set, because our set was basically the desert. And that was a character on its own, which really helped feed into the fear and the action element of it. And then the words on the page helped define the character, it organically came to life.”

Mir was most recently seen in Netflix’s ‘Resident Evil’. He has a considerable body of work in Pakistan and earned acclaim for his performances in ‘Parwaaz Hay Junoon’, ‘Aangan’, and more.

Following those, ‘Dhoop Ki Deewar,’ where Mir starred alongside Pakistani actor Sajal Aly, was a global success for Indian streamer ZEE5.

Next, Mir will play Hamlet at the Rose Theater in Brampton, Canada in October. In 2019, he starred in ‘Hamlet: A Ghost Story’ for Canada’s The Shakespeare Company, and his interpretation won him a Betty Mitchell Award for outstanding performance by an actor.