She’s an explorer, wandering the world, peering around new corners to see what life has in store for her.

Bright-eyed, with a half-smile and a slight lift of her chin, Faryal Mehmood is prepared to take on the highs and the lows, the successes and the pitfalls, and learn from them. She’ll be in one city one day, and another the other day and, then, she’ll pause for just a bit, take her place in front of the camera and deliver some magic.

True to the name of her recently released movie, Wakhri, Faryal is unique, a wild child who paves a path that is hers and hers alone. It’s one of the very first questions that I ask her when we meet: a lot of people must tell you that you truly are wakhri, right?

She nods and laughs.

“Yes, I’ve gotten that a lot. I actually own up to it. When I heard the name of the movie, I thought to myself that it sounded like me, very much like me. I even have a pink neon sign above my bed saying, ‘Wakhri’. It’s meant for me.”

Those who have seen the movie — as I have — will agree that perhaps no one could have played the role of the rebellious, unabashed titular character so effortlessly. The movie has elicited mixed reactions, but Faryal’s acting prowess cannot be denied. It’s also given her a reason to stay on in Pakistan for a bit longer — she’s an incessant traveler — and make red carpet appearances and interact with the media.

Actor Faryal Mehmood has set the screen ablaze in Wakhri after a long time of being incommunicado.Where was she all this time? Why does she not take on more roles? And how does the niece of Roohi Bano and daughter of Roohani Bano deal with people labelling her ‘bold’?

How many interviews have you sat through so far, I ask her. “About 45!” she laughs. “There are times when I have been talking in an interview and I am hearing myself in my head and wondering ‘What am I saying?’”

Are you doing that now? “No, no, this is such an honest, refreshing conversation,” she assures me.

And so, we plunge right in.

The last time I saw Faryal on screen was about three years ago, in the exemplary Raqeeb Se, directed by Kashif Nisar for the Hum TV Network. Why did she take such a long sabbatical before returning to the spotlight?

“After Raqeeb Se, I was looking for a script that was better and I couldn’t find one,” she says. “I did get offered the role of Natasha in the drama Jaisay Aapki Marzi and I really liked it, but at that time, my dates did not match with those of the other actors. I was then travelling for a while and, when I returned to Pakistan for Wakhri, Saba [Hamid] Apa, who was directing the drama, told me that they were shooting it already.

“Also, around the time Raqeeb Se was airing, I got married, then divorced, and a lot was going on with me personally and professionally. I felt the need to take some time off and give time just to myself.”

I am incredulous: so even though she must have been offered quite a few scripts after the critical success of Raqeeb Se, she did not go on a signing spree like most of her peers, eschewed the opportunity to do more work, make more money, and chose instead to travel out?

Faryal nods as if it were the most obvious thing to do.

“The thing is, I can’t go back to enacting the woman who says, ‘Aap haath dho lein, main chai bana ke laati hoon’ [You wash up while I prepare tea]. It’s a character that sells well, but I am not here just for the money. I actually do this because I love it. I do it to satisfy the hunger in me, to just be someone, be that character, live someone else’s life for a few days.”

An actor’s work involves observing people. Sometimes, when I am playing a character, I’ll do something completely different and I’ll wonder where it came from and that I probably noticed it in someone that I had met at some point. When you travel, you get to make such good connections with people from around the world.”

She proceeds to outline her process as an actor — it is quite an eye-opener. “When I am doing a project, I am away from my family. I am all alone. I don’t even speak to my friends. For the span of time that I am playing the character, I become the character. It’s hectic and it’s emotionally consuming.

“I recall becoming extremely rude while I was acting in the drama Gustakh. I salute Danny [her then-husband Daniyal Raheal] for putting up with me at that time!” she laughs. “Then there was this one time when I was acting in the drama Siskiyaan, which had a really dark script. I could feel the sadness just taking over me, not just in the way that I was speaking on camera, but in just the energy that I brought into the room. I would just be silent all the time.

“After I am done playing a character, it takes me two to three months to get back to myself. I forget what I am really like and I travel, in order to get out of it.”

It sounds gruelling, I observe to her. “It is,” she nods. “And for the longest time, I didn’t even realise that this is what happened to me. I got married and my husband didn’t know either. Whoever comes into my life next, I will tell them that this is what happens and that you may have to live with several different people at different points in time.

“And you’ll have to love me a lot in order to handle this. It could be a lot of fun too, you know? You get to meet new girls every two, three months. You’ll never get bored!” she laughs.

She loves what she does but she’s also quite the globetrotter. Has she ever considered adopting a more stationary lifestyle in order to get more work?

“It’s true that I do lose out on work opportunities because of my travelling,” she agrees. “I’ll be in the States and I’ll get a call, offering me a part in a music video or in a commercial and I’ll have to tell them that I am not in the country. I am always ready to come if they fly me back but, usually, they have other options available to them.

“But I wouldn’t want to settle [in Karachi] simply out of fear. I have learnt that, if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen. I shot two films earlier and both got shelved. One was Senti Aur Mental,directed by Yasra Rizvi. It was a fun, very well-shot movie which never managed to release due to a lack of funds. Then I was also doing Sorry: A Love Story with Faysal Quraishi, and that too didn’t see the light of the day. These things are just not in my control and, since they are not, why should I stress out about them?”

For money, perhaps?

“Money comes,” she shrugs. “My mother jokingly calls me Lakshmi[the Hindu goddess of wealth], that money just comes my way no matter what I do. If I am travelling and I run out of cash, I’ll do some odd job. I’ve delivered pizzas, been a sales executive, done managerial jobs in skin-care companies, worked with the make-up brand MAC for five years…

“An actor’s work involves observing people. Sometimes, when I am playing a character, I’ll do something completely different and I’ll wonder where it came from and that I probably noticed it in someone that I had met at some point. When you travel, you get to make such good connections with people from around the world who have nothing to do with your life, but who will pass on a profound bit of advice to you or will inspire you in some way.”

She continues: “Life can’t just be about money and work and it certainly isn’t about glitz and glamour. That’s something that I keep reminding myself of when I start enjoying all the attention, when I get caught up in promotions and interviews, that this is all temporary. Don’t get used to it. There is a world outside of our industry and then, a world outside of Pakistan, and in that world no one knows you.

“I mean, I have seen my khala [maternal aunt] Roohi Bano, surrounded by admirers all the time. And then, there came a point when they were no longer there and, at the same time, her mental state deteriorated. I have also seen how difficult it was for my mother to transition from being a performer to just making ends meet for her family with whatever job was available.

“There was a time when she was ‘the’ Roohani Bano. She would come on stage and light it up, but then she took us to America and we were trying to settle there. She had to let go of Roohani Bano and just become a mother and I know that the transition was difficult.”

She concludes, “So, I know that fame is momentary. If I read a script and love it, I will go to any length to get it done. If I don’t like it, I won’t stick around. I’ll be off to Berlin or New York or Budapest, and I’ll figure out where to earn from while I am there!”

I quip to her that she doesn’t seem to be too fond of money. “But I am fond of clothes,” her eyes twinkle, “so I end up shopping wherever I go!”

Despite the fact that she has a rare talent for lighting up the screen, Faryal gets stuck with the tagline of being ‘Bold’. Does she feel that her work ends up getting trivialised with her clothes or her opinions taking centre stage on social media?

“Bold,” she repeats after me, “yes, I do get called that a lot. And I wonder, is it because I say whatever I think even though I am a woman and, if I had been a man, these opinions wouldn’t have seemed bold at all? Or are they talking about my clothes and objectifying me? Then I would say, no, this is not bold. I can show you bold and this is not it!” She laughs.

“It could also be because of my acting choices. But probably not. Who wants to think for that long anyway? People would rather judge and be mean and zoom in on my picture when I am wearing a short dress and comment on my knees or my legs!”

Does it disturb her? “No, I have come to the point that I don’t even consider online trolls people,” she replies. “I perceive them as robotic internet wiggles who have no mind, no future, nothing. All they can do is curse and be nasty.

“If anything, the viciousness on social media actually raises my concern for these people. What must their lives be like for them to be so mean? And what will their future be like?”

Has she ever considered changing her public persona just in order to ward off the trolls and shrug off the ‘bold’ image? “I wouldn’t be able to pull it off!” she shrugs. “People can perceive me however they want. For me, what’s important is if I am at peace, if I am being honest to myself, and am able to sleep well at night.”

I observe that she’s a wanderer, a free spirit, travelling between roles and countries. She nods in agreement. Does she ever see herself settling down in a single place or with a single person?

“That’s actually something that I have been working on for the past three years,” she tells me. “I would really like the stability. All my life, my family moved around so much and, then, I travel so much as well. I think I would like to be in a stable relationship.”

Recalling her marriage, she says, “When I got married, I was in my 20s and I just fell in love and just wanted to do whatever made the other person happy. As a teenager, I would always be working or studying. I never had the time to just hang with my friends and, when I met Danny, I fell in love with him because he really knew how to live! I really learnt how to be in the moment and just chill out through him and perhaps he learnt how to be serious through me.

“The funny thing is, getting married was never on the timeline for either me or him. The coronavirus pandemic happened and his parents just got really worried that should something happen to them, they wanted to see us settled. That is why we actually went ahead with a nikaah. If it was up to me, I would have settled down after four or five years. I would have wanted to be as old as I am right now to get married.”

“The 20-year-old me would actually be very proud of the person that I am today!” she confesses.

And what’s she like today? “I live in the moment. I focus on things that make me happy. I see a lot of women in the industry hang on to their careers as if it is their lifeline. This is not my lifeline. I do my work with love and when I don’t understand something, I very simply back out.”

Evidently, Wakhri was a script that she ‘understood’. Is cinema worth the risk, though, given how the local box office rarely ever delivers a hit?

“I used to watch Pakistani movies but then I stopped, having lost faith in them like the masses did,” she says. “So, yes, I was afraid of doing a film but I was drawn towards Wakhri’s story. This isn’t the usual movie with typical tropes. It’s a woman’s story. When people used to ask me who my hero was in the movie, I would tell them that I am the hero and the heroine. It’s a movie that makes a statement.”

She waited quite a while after Raqeeb Se to return to the spotlight. Is her next screen appearance also going to be after as long a time? “Let’s see,” she muses. “There are some interesting scripts that I am considering right now.”

If she loves them, she’ll sign up for them and become a new girl, a new character for a few months. If she doesn’t, she’ll wander off again, for some time, until the camera lures her back again.

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 4th, 2024