I can be your hero

Gurfateh Pirzada, only afewroles old, is the green flag we didn't know we needed. He's learning from women. He wants to be more thana lover and a fighter. He's hoping we all do better. No wonder everyone's crushing on him

- Karishma Kuenzang

Is Gurfateh Singh Pirzada the greenest flag in entertainment today? Let's review the data. He debuted in 2018, with the film Friends in Law, playing a gay son, stranded in India as his mother spends 10 days in Bangkok with his partner. A bold opening. He got noticed in last year's show Class, as Neeraj, a young man who's done prison time, but isn't afraid to call out casteism among his elite classmates. Okay, we're interested.

Then, his breakout role in September, with Call Me Bae. Pirzada plays Neel, dashing journalist and surprisingly empathetic mentor to a young woman in the midst of a #MeToo reckoning. He's supportive, aware of his privilege and wants to do better. All right, who is this guy? Pirzada, 29, is working on finding the answer too.

I didn't grow up with my father, so my idea of being a man doesn't come from him.

While Pirzada's breakout moment came when he played the dashing journalist Neel in Call Me Bae (top) alongside Ananya Panday, he's played several roles before. In the 2023 Netflix series Class (above) he was Neeraj, a young man who's done prison time.

First lessons

Growing up in Punjab, then in Delhi after his parents separated when he was nine, Pirzada says he didn't have much of an understanding of what it meant to be an ideal man. "There were many examples of the kind of man I didn't want to be," he recalls. So, he took his cues from the women in his household, his mother Paramjit Kaur, an educator and poet; and elder sister Mehreen, an actor.