Actor Abbas, who took a decade-long break after Pachakkallam in 2015, recently made a comeback with the GV Prakash-starrer, Happy Raj. He quickly followed it up with the Prime Video series Exam, co-starring Dushara Vijayan and Aditi Balan.

In a recent interview with Cinema Express, discussing his role in Exam, Abbas exclusively opened up about what made him quit the film industry 11 years ago and what motivated him to make a comeback after all these years.

He said, "Back then, I was not interested in cinema. I felt this profession was boring, and so I left the field. I wanted to give a chance to other new artists because, at one point, I was also new to the industry. I wanted to see if I could explore a different skill set that I had apart from that required for acting."

Abbas then detailed that he refound his passion for movies. "But after all these years I am back now. I realised that passion for cinema didn't go anywhere, and that's when I decided to make a comeback. I didn't have that fire in me back then, and I decided not to waste my time. Today, I have regained the interest to come back to cinema, and so I'm back," he explained.

In Exam, Abbas plays the role of Jayachandran, a former jailer who teams up with undercover cop Jhansi (Dushara) to expose a criminal cartel that influences exams for job placements using proxy students, corruption and leaked question papers.

Abbas made his debut with Kadhal Desam in 1996. He is known for his performance in films like Pooveli, Kannezhuthi Pottum Thottu, Raja, Padayappa, and Kandukondain Kandukondain, among others. Before Happy Raj, his last Tamil film was the English-Tamil bilingual, Ramanujan (2014). He currently also has a Malayalam film, Half, in the pipeline.