Rahul Kohli had an adrenaline rush. He met in the office of Mike Flanagan, the modern day horror master behind the Haunting series, and there was a box of pizza on his desk. The two were still filming The Haunting of Bly Manor when Flanagan offered him a role on an upcoming project, Midnight Mass, in which he would play Sheriff Hasaan. And he would gain weight too.
“Let’s go,” recalls Kohli, saying before he took a slice of pizza out of the box and aggressively stuffed it into his mouth.
Kohli ended up gaining 30 pounds of fat for Mass, and this with some overlap at the end of filming Bly Manor (he says you can tell his character Owen gets a bit bigger in the last few episodes of this series) and that he’s “on it.” the bad way “did of ordering things like McFlurries from his bed on DoorDash and not doing things like working with a nutritionist. “I was just like eat crap, eat crap, eat crap,” he recalls. “And we got there.”
EIKE SCHROTER / NETFLIX
We should probably go back a bit. While filming Bly Manor, Kohli noticed that Flanagan, who was previously behind Netflix’s limited series The Haunting of Hill House and the Stephen King film adaptation, Doctor Sleep, among others, was giving his opinion. He had asked how old he thought he could play, what dialects he could speak in, and briefly mentioned another project. After enough clues were dropped, Kohli requested a meeting to get answers. The meeting proved fruitful as it resulted in the role of Sheriff Hassan, the lonely police presence in the small island setting of Midnight Mass. Mass, Flanagan’s latest high-art horror series, was able to wow the audience every seven hour episodes before being sent to Google for the best analysis the Thinkpiece Industrial Complex can offer.
Just before filming for the fair began, Kohli noticed that he was not breathing properly; his normally slim figure was not designed to hold the weight he had gained. But he intended to work it through. He arrived in Vancouver to read the table that was due to take place just before filming – March 13, 2020. You can imagine what happened next.
The Covid-19 shutdown hit midnight mass like anywhere – the Canadian border closed and Kohli returned to Los Angeles with an extra 30 pounds of unhealthy weight. What was originally planned in two weeks turned into several months with no start date in sight. Meanwhile, Kohli was not doing well, he was woken up in the middle of the night with heartburn and stomach problems.
Eike Schröter
Kohli, a longtime and devoted gamer, eventually sent in a photo of Joel, the protagonist from the hit Playstation game The Last of Us, and Flanagan was on board. After a shooting date was finally deemed certain and set, Kohli worked with coaches in Vancouver to shed all 30 pounds he’d gained before regaining them in the form of muscles.
“It was the dumbest way of doing nonsense I’ve ever done that put me on as much weight as the industry would be, like oooh, look at him !, just to lose it all and hit the gym hard “, he says.
One place you might hear of something like this would be Kohli’s social media feeds, where he has over 350,000 Twitter followers and over 440,000 on Instagram.
But while his role in Bly Manor was dubbed by some as the newest “internet buddy” a year ago, he’s not having a hard time staying humble. (“Because it’s not real,” he says. “If I want, I can find stuff that says the opposite.”) He has built his following over the years between roles on cult shows like The CW’s iZombie, which he appeared on, See growing in all 71 episodes of and Bly Manor, and while he obviously doesn’t take that commitment entirely seriously, he sees a way it has helped over the years.
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“It has enabled me to create a greater presence than maybe my work. I was more of a minor character at iZombie, and similarly created a bigger footprint at Bly than the roles necessarily did. “
Still, he sees his time on social media as limited.
“Just like a word trend, I think, an actor or a music trend. One minute you’re the internet’s friend, the next minute you’re the internet’s bad guy. It’s everyone’s turn. So I don’t take any of this seriously,” he said says. “My personal relationship with social media is temporary. We don’t have a long-term relationship. And once I can get out of this toxic relationship, I probably will.”
KOHLI AGAINST THE OTHERS toxic relationship in Midnight Mass, where his character is constantly viewed as an outsider. He’s the only lead actor in the entire show who has no background or history with the Catholic Church – Hassan is a Muslim – and many characters on the show treat him as that outsider, including sometimes his own teenage son.
Part of what attracted him here is the contrast Flanagan built into the role; a modern twist on the type of character a Clint Eastwood would have played in the past.
“The sheriff role in cinema and television has been one of America’s most iconic heroes for many years, and has existed for years,” he says. “And [Flanagan] had taken America’s greatest heroes of cinema and cast a man who has the physicality, or at least the looks of America’s greatest villain after 9/11: the bearded brown man.
And so he wanted to tap into the spirit of this old Hollywood character. Many of Sheriff Hassan’s poses and gestures with which he carries himself purposely mirror some of those of Eastwood or John Wayne or a number of other Western characters, in a gesture meant to show how slow and quiet the sheriff was. He wanted to make sure everyone felt the same: this is a character type you’ve seen before, but this time he’s Muslim.
And above all, Eastwood was someone Kohli observed very closely in his upbringing. In fact, it turned out to be essentially a modern version of one of his dream roles.
EIKE SCHROTER / NETFLIX
“My dad is a big, big, big spaghetti western fan. And as a kid, I always wanted to be Clint Eastwood, ”he says. “Well, not Clint Eastwood – The Man Without a Name.
A combination of Covid protocols and the show’s natural structure helped Kohli become even more isolated for his underdog character during production. Where his previous appearances at iZombie and Bly Manor were inherently social – he describes it as a “campus” feeling, living abroad and often socializing and partying with castmates – Covid didn’t allow that at all. On top of that, he was one of the few Britons in the cast (the only other was actor Louis Oliver, son of Sherlock and Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat), and because his character wasn’t in (most)) the stuff of the local Church, he worked with an Islamic adviser while everyone else was busy elsewhere.
He admittedly moved a little away from the group and everything that was going on. He has since made up for it on social media, text messages, and elsewhere, but has no regrets in what turned out to be a pretty tricky shoot. “It wasn’t particularly fun filming for a number of reasons,” he says. “But it was so rewarding to see the show when it was done and to be like it was all worth it.”
YOU THINK SOMEONE who was regularly on a zombie show and now has a penchant for the scary in two surefire hit horror series. But that is not the case.
“I hate horror,” says Kohli with a smile. “I can’t stand horror! I wasn’t a horror fan. I burned my fingers as a child. I was a very scared child – afraid of everything, afraid of my own shadow. “
He goes on to explain how he saw Jaws and The Exorcist as a kid and it bothered him a lot. His entry into the genre as the massive gamer he has remained to this day was video games. But that changed when he booked Bly Manor and got the chance to work with Flanagan.
EIKE SCHROTER / NETFLIX
Hill House by this point already had a reputation that preceded it. But Kohli had to do his due diligence as an actor, and his expectations were met.
“For me, when a horror is celebrated, it means staying away from it. That means he’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing, so don’t fucking look at it! I avoided Hill House the whole time, ”he said. “And then I booked Bly Manor, and so I did some research on Mike, which meant I had to see this.
That was the beginning of a relationship he doesn’t want to let go of, even after midnight mass is over. At Bly, Flanagan only directed the first episode and acted as the showrunner instead. But Kohli got the full experience at midnight mass: Flanagan directed all seven episodes and also served as his dialect trainer.
Kohli notes that most other directors would cast based on what an actor has previously done. But Flanagan casts in such a way that there is virtually zero overlap between Owen from Bly and the Sheriff in Midnight Mass. And his trust in the director turned it into a relationship that he doesn’t want to let go of completely.
EIKE SCHROTER / NETFLIX
“I don’t want to work with anyone but him,” he says. “That annoys my team! Because they want to send me about things and I say ‘No! Because Mike said maybe we could do that later, so I want to be free. ‘ So this just happened – I don’t want to break up with Mike and be with someone else. ‘
When his time filming Midnight Mass came to an end, Kohli had no choice but to get going straight away. He made a (currently unannounced) movie immediately after filming was completed and took over 20 hours of driving back to Los Angeles in one shot. And although he’s now moved on from it – he’s just announced that he’ll be part of the cast for a new Hulu-produced pilot to be produced by Mandy Patinkin – he’s still got a bit of achievement and anxiety and imposter syndrome, that bound seemed to manifest itself during the production of a super-intense and often complex horror project that focuses on belief and religion.
“It’s been in the back of my mind every day since we packed,” he says. “Was I good enough? Did i do my service? Do I fit into this incredible ensemble group? Although I never felt like I was improving my game like everyone else on the show was. So that was always there. ”
Kohli admits that relatable type of fear is something that will likely go away once the show finally hits Netflix – an “end of the journey feeling”. And maybe if he stays on social media long enough, he’ll hear if those fans love or hate his take on Clint Eastwood on Twitter. It would be hard to bet against the former at this point.
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source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/26/rahul-kohli-on-30-lb-weight-gain-and-becoming-clint-eastwood/
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