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Milliyet — 19 January 2003

In early 2003, Nejat İşler was at an unusual point in his career.

He was no longer an unknown theatre-trained actor trying to find work.

But he was not yet the cult figure associated with Barda, Kaybedenler Kulübü, Ercüment Çözer, Gümüşlük or the deliberately distant public image that would define later periods of his life.

The television series Gülbeyaz had suddenly made him much more visible.

Milliyet approached him at exactly this moment: when the entertainment industry was beginning to construct a new public identity around him.

That identity was simple.

Nejat İşler was becoming a star.

More specifically, he was being presented as a new leading man.

His own description of himself was considerably less glamorous.

From Street Vending to Television Fame

The contrast in the article’s title is deliberately dramatic.

Before becoming widely known as an actor, İşler had worked in many ordinary jobs, including selling goods on the street.

This part of his biography would later become one of the familiar elements of the Nejat İşler story.

But in 2003, it was still useful as a genuine contrast.

The public was seeing a man on television who looked increasingly like a conventional star.

His biography did not fit that image easily.

He had not followed a protected path into celebrity culture.

Work, financial insecurity and changing jobs were already part of his understanding of adult life.

This distinction becomes important when his later interviews are read chronologically.

Nejat İşler would repeatedly show discomfort with the idea that professional visibility should create a superior social identity.

The roots of that attitude are already visible here.

“Leading Man” Is Someone Else’s Definition

The most important aspect of this early interview is his response to being described as a new leading man.

He does not appear especially interested in accepting the label.

His basic position is that he is an actor.

If a production places him somewhere, his responsibility is to do the job well.

This may sound like a modest professional answer, but in retrospect it becomes one of the most stable patterns in his public identity.

Other people repeatedly give Nejat İşler a role outside the screen.

Leading man.

Bad boy.

Rebel.

Ladies’ man.

Tough guy.

Loser.

Drinker.

Bodrum exile.

Cult actor.

He repeatedly creates distance between himself and these simplified identities.

The 2003 version of that resistance is still very basic:

Do not confuse the role the industry gives me with what I think my profession is.

Becoming Famous Without Building a Fame Philosophy

Later Nejat İşler interviews contain developed ideas about fame.

He speaks about privacy, withdrawing from the television industry, living away from Istanbul and eventually trying to buy himself more free time.

None of that philosophy is fully formed here.

That is precisely why this interview is useful.

It captures him before those ideas become polished explanations.

Fame is happening to him faster than he has built a theory about it.

The industry sees potential.

Television audiences recognize him.

Journalists begin describing him through celebrity categories.

İşler answers mostly through professional language.

He wants to be understood as someone who acts.

Gülbeyaz and the First Major Public Transformation

Gülbeyaz was crucial because television could create a type of national recognition that theatre and smaller film roles could not.

Once an actor enters people’s homes every week, public ownership begins.

Viewers no longer encounter only the character.

They begin constructing an imagined personality for the performer.

For İşler, this would become a recurring problem.

The public would eventually associate him strongly with characters who were:

• masculine,
• wounded,
• cynical,
• rebellious,
• sexually confident,
• violent,
• lonely,
• morally ambiguous.

In 2003, however, that mythology is only beginning.

The important thing is that İşler already refuses to define himself through the mythology.

Work Before Image

Another significant element in this period is the importance of work itself.

His biography contains jobs that have little connection with cultural prestige.

This gives his later hostility toward celebrity hierarchy a material background.

When someone has experienced work outside the entertainment industry, being treated as socially exceptional because cameras are present can appear artificial.

This may partly explain why later interviews contain such persistent attempts to remove glamour from his profession.

He frequently talks about acting as work.

Not because he thinks acting is meaningless.

Quite the opposite.

He takes acting seriously enough that he does not need the celebrity structure around it to make the profession valuable.

The Beginning of a Long Conflict

In retrospect, the 2003 interview begins a conflict that continues for more than two decades.

On one side:

the industry wants a recognizable Nejat İşler.

On the other:

Nejat İşler wants the freedom to remain harder to define.

In 2003, the industry’s preferred definition is “leading man.”

Later it becomes the rebellious masculine outsider.

After Kaybedenler Kulübü, it becomes a different kind of cult male figure.

After his illness, another public narrative appears: the survivor who abandoned Istanbul and found peace in Gümüşlük.

Each image contains something real.

None of them is sufficient.

This early interview is valuable because we can see the mechanism beginning before it becomes complicated.

A Useful Comparison with 2010

Seven years later, İşler’s attitude becomes much more explicit.

By 2010, after years of television visibility, he says openly that he does not enjoy being popular and wants to leave the professional system he calls the “piyasa.”

The distance between the two moments is revealing.

2003: fame is arriving.

2010: fame and the industrial system around it have become something he wants distance from.

This suggests that his later withdrawal was not simply a sudden reaction to his health crisis in 2014.

The tension appears much earlier.

A Useful Comparison with 2015

In 2015, İşler would make another important distinction.

He would say that television series were finished for him, but cinema was not.

He would also insist that he intended to remain an actor for the rest of his life.

This clarifies the principle that is only beginning to appear in 2003.

He does not reject acting.

He rejects structures that begin to control how he works and how he is perceived.

The difference matters.

A Useful Comparison with 2025

By the Evcilik period, more than twenty years after this interview, Nejat İşler moves one step further.

He becomes a producer.

The young actor who resisted being reduced to a leading-man label eventually becomes someone interested not only in performing inside a production, but in helping construct the production itself.

Seen across the full chronology, this creates an interesting progression:

2003 — Do not define me through the image you created.

2010 — I want distance from the system creating that image.

2015 — I will keep acting, but I will choose the conditions.

2025 — If necessary, I will help build the conditions myself.

That makes this apparently simple early-career interview much more important than it first seems.

Why This Interview Matters

This is currently the earliest substantial and directly verifiable Nejat İşler interview in this archive.

It captures him at the moment when national fame is beginning to form around Gülbeyaz.

More importantly, it contains an early version of a position that will become central to his later public identity:

professional identity should not be confused with celebrity identity.

The entertainment industry sees a new leading man.

Nejat İşler sees an actor trying to do his job well.

That gap between external image and internal definition will remain one of the central tensions of his career.