Zhalay Sarhadi and I meet in a sparsely crowded coffee shop in Karachi. We have an hour or so before she rushes off for her next appointment, a photo shoot for the promotion of her upcoming movie Carma.

With the movie releasing in early September, this is a busy time for the actress. She has to wrap up the promotional campaigns and, then, leave for the US where — unrelated to the movie — she is part of a range of celebrity meet-and-greet events. She’s also just recovered from her very first encounter with Covid-19, an occurrence that delayed our scheduled meeting by a few weeks.

In the course of our conversation, while we sip our coffees — hers, a strong black without sugar, mine being frothy and milky — I ask her if she is happy with the acting roles that she has been doing of late. “No,” she answers, even before I have finished asking the question.

“Roles that are exciting and have something new to offer are very few. I have crossed 30, which means that, as far as Pakistani TV is concerned, I can’t be anything other than a mother, bhabi [sister-in-law], phuppo or khala [aunts].

As the granddaughter of acclaimed screenwriter and film director Zia Sarhadi and the niece of veteran actor Khayyam Sarhadi, a love for performing runs in Zhalay Sarhadi’s blood. But, increasingly, the model and actor finds herself turning down roles. She explains why

“I’d be comfortable with playing these roles as long as they had something to offer. I just don’t want to play uni-dimensional characters who are either evil or suffering silently in the background. I was recently offered the role of actor Muneeb Butt’s phuppo in a drama, and I refused!”

No Phuppos, Please!

As I discover, there are quite a few roles that Zhalay ends up saying no to. The granddaughter of acclaimed screenwriter and film director Zia Sarhadi and the niece of veteran actor Khayyam Sarhadi, a love for performing runs in her blood. She refuses to stifle her passion by relegating herself to roles that don’t excite her.

“I just don’t want to get stereotyped into a certain genre,” she says. “My movie is coming up. Four of my dramas are ready to be aired on TV. There’s actually a lot of money in playing maternal characters. Some of my peers, such as ZQ [Zainab Qayyum] and Salma Hasan, have resigned themselves to such roles. If my game was to make a lot of money, I would have jumped on board too. But I want to work on my craft.”

And so, eschewing the lucrative, extensive domains of maternal TV drama roles, Zhalay chooses to be a foul-mouthed, malevolent gang leader in Carma — she tells me that the plentitude of expletives in the movie have had to be edited out in order to make it suitable for the Pakistani audience.

She’s happier playing a manic depressive in one drama and an 800-year-old demon in another, both projects primed to release on the yet-to-launch Green Channel. Who’d want to play a wheeling dealing, long-suffering mother — or mother-in-law — anyway, when you could cackle and wield dark magic as a demon?

“I am really excited about my upcoming projects,” she tells me. “It can be tricky, though. I am a working actor, this is my bread and butter. There are many times when I have signed on to TV roles just in order to stay relevant. How do we pick and choose when we are offered such limited opportunities?

“Still, I’ve been lucky,” she adds. “I have done some very interesting, diverse roles. Things were different in the past. I have worked a lot with A&B Productions and both Babar Javed and Asif Raza Mir really listened to me if I asked them to give me a role that was different from the one that I had played previously. I know that A&B Productions’ reputation is now tarnished but I had a fantastic time working with them. As an artist, they gave me a free hand.

“Similarly, I loved being part of the drama Yaar Na Bichhrray with the Hum TV Network. Mohsin Talat is an amazing director, and it was a great experience working with Momal Productions for the first time. Everyone worked on that drama together, we were in constant contact with the writer and every character had shades and made sense.”

I am really excited about my upcoming projects,” she tells me. “It can be tricky, though. I am a working actor, this is my bread and butter. There are many times when I have signed on to TV roles just in order to stay relevant. How do we pick and choose when we are offered such limited opportunities?”

Does she have a good feeling about Carma, especially considering how the local cinema box office has proven to be a difficult beast to master?

“I haven’t seen the movie and I won’t be seeing it till the premiere,” she reveals. “At this point, what I can say is that the story is supremely different. It’s dark and edgy and I am playing a character that I have never played before. It isn’t releasing on Eid and I am glad of that! We need to start thinking beyond the two Eid holidays and I believe that if the content is good, people will go to see a movie.

“For me, the process of shooting Carma was extremely enjoyable and challenging. I have always focused on enjoying the process rather than worrying about the outcome. I want my projects to do well. If they don’t, I do get disappointed, but I don’t make them my life’s sole purpose.”

No time for controversy

Does she also not obsess over winning awards or getting nominated? Zhalay dwells upon this.

“I used to, at one point, until one day I got nominated for a Lux Style Award [LSA]. It was for the movie Chalay Thay Saath, which hadn’t even sent its portfolio to the jury. My role in the movie had been miniscule but the jury told me that they had liked my performance.

“Sitting backstage at the ceremony, I knew that I wouldn’t win and, in fact, shouldn’t win, considering that there were other nominees in my category who had done stronger roles. And I thought to myself whether being nominated or the notion of winning could alter my career in any way. Would it improve my craft or take my career graph to a new high? The answer was no. My thirst for awards simply died away that day.

“What I do enjoy is people being familiar with my work. I enjoy being recognised for some of my roles. I feel blessed that social media controversies aren’t my claim to fame.”

But it isn’t easy sidestepping the social media minefield, is it? Only recently, a clip went viral where Zhalay talked about how, should she be in the place of fellow actor Hania Aamir, she would take a break from social media.

“What I said became viral and people didn’t even bother to see the whole interview and figure out the context in which I had spoken,” Zhalay shakes her head. “I would have said the same about anyone, not just Hania. Social media can be toxic and I myself take mini-breaks from it. Random people can make mean comments without even knowing anything about you. They may be entirely clueless, but are still very hurtful.”

Does she respond to trolls who make mean comments? “No, usually I just steer away unless I have something witty to say. These people are actually just your fans who are trying to get your attention by being mean. I comment back and usually add that I have given them their 15 minutes of fame!”

TV politics

Moving away from the social media’s mindless games, has she endured politics within the Pakistani TV industry?

“No, and I have worked for nearly 23 years,” she says. “I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I have never aligned myself with a camp. As a result, I’ve never gotten banned anywhere. I’ve still gotten work, without needless networking. Most people in the industry don’t operate that way, but I just think that, if someone likes my work and wants to offer me a role, they will approach me even if they aren’t friends with me.”

She continues: “I trust my instincts when it comes to signing on to a project. Recently, a lot of noise was made regarding an upcoming Pak-Turk collaboration, a series called Selahaddin Eyyubi. Pakistani actors were asked to audition and my publicist convinced me to give it a go. It was a good experience for me, especially since we hardly ever audition for roles here, and I got selected.

“The organisers proceeded to make a WhatsApp group which consisted of all the people who had been shortlisted for the series, known actors as well as young, aspiring artists from the National Academy of the Performing Arts (Napa). Every now and then, they would post an update and when people, the young actors particularly, would excitedly ask them questions, they would give noncommittal answers.

“One fine day, it was announced on the group that the series’ set was ready and the actors should come to Turkey for its inauguration. When people asked the details about flight tickets and stay, the organisers went blank yet again. Perhaps they expected the actors to pay for their own fare and stay.

“I had been a silent member of the group and was, in fact, in Turkey on a family vacation at the time. I could have easily extended my trip by a few days and visited the set. But I did not like the way they were communicating with us. It was likely that they would eventually end up sidelining the young Napa artists and simply opt for those of us who are more well-known.

“I left the WhatsApp group at that point, stating that whenever there was a question on the group, the answer was evasive and that I was respectfully going to opt out.”

What does she think went wrong? “I really don’t know,” she says. “My ego was certainly not hurt. I just didn’t like how disorganised everything was. They shouldn’t have initially started things off on such a large scale if they didn’t have the capacity to follow through. As someone who is secure in her career, I feel that I am in a position to speak out when others can’t.”

She extends the same sentiment to the opinions that she projects on mainstream media. “As actors, we have the power to influence the people who like our work. We have a responsibility,” she explains. “Six years ago, I was in a talk show where I spoke up against colourism and how I owned my skin colour and did not try to lighten it in any way. Only recently, I received a long letter through social media from a girl who said that I had given her the confidence to be comfortable in her own skin!

“I am not fond of generating masala merely to trend for a few days, but I can be quite brazen with my opinions, sometimes even a bit too honest,” Zhalay admits.

“For instance, I don’t understand this country’s obsession with ageism. From Firdous [Jamal] uncle attacking Mahira Khan to casting directors trying to equate my screen age with my real age and where they could fit me in a role, it’s endless!

“I also dislike how we are fond of asking personal questions and somehow creating a controversy. A long time ago, ARY Digital was trying to find a new morning show host and, for a week, Fahad Mustafa and I came on board. I would have an earpiece on and the prompter talking to me through it would keep telling me to ask my guests personal questions.

“I was relatively new at the time and, sometimes, I’d have a senior director as a guest. Besides, it was a morning show and not a late night magazine show. I realised at that time that I couldn’t be part of this bandwagon that was out to create gossip!”

There are upsides to her work, though. There’s her passion for acting. She’s joined TikTok and loves “entertaining people within the span of 30 seconds!” Sponsorships through Instagram and TikTok bring in a fair amount of revenue and she says that she’s never modelled as much lawn as she has this year!

“I love lawn shoots, especially since I come from a modelling background,” Zhalay smiles. “It pays well and the brands treat you so well!”

And then there’s her movie, Carma, in which she plays a major role, all set to release. I ask her a question that I pose to almost all actors who dabble both with TV and cinema: why work in the movies at all considering that very few local releases are successful?

“In my case, movies give me the chance to do something that’s completely out of the box,” she says. “It’s a less restrictive medium compared to TV. Seeing yourself on the big screen gives you a high. It’s addictive and exciting.”

Exciting. There’s that word again. It surfaces quite often in Zhalay’s opinions and observations. And rightly so. In an arena littered with generic storylines, cookie-cutter roles and long drawn-out plots, excitement is what we need — for the TV and cinema audience as well as the actors.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 21st, 2022