It's unfortunate Pakistan doesn't have a platform for progressive stories: Sarwat Gilani

Actor discusses how liberating it was to finally work on something like 'Churails'

Actor Sarwat Gilani recently opened up about working in Asim Abbasi's Churails in a BBC interview on YouTube. The celebrity discussed the challenges of making the series but most importantly, expressed how liberating it was to be finally working in something other than your regular, repetitive and unrealistic content.

"I knew how Asim writes because I had read Cake," she started off by saying. "He delicately weaves the characters and the story together but when I read this script I was mind blown," recalled the actor. 

She went on to confess how during her18 years of acting career and as a viewer she had never seen anything like this. "Who writes like this? Where has he come from? I was like, 'even if I get a teeny tiny role in it, I'll be happy'," said the star.

Asked about how she decided to take the risk of jumping from her traditional on-screen persona to something so intrepid, she said, "Only a fool would be afraid to take a plunge into something like this."

Gilani added how she and her co-actors knew it would be tough and that there would be consequences but they wanted to jump into this fire. "Every actor knew they'd have to go into a safe house after this releases, because you don't get that kind of content here. But I've been playing the victim, the bahu, the girl next door, and it was all safe. This was time to do something different."

She went on to relay how she is tired of the narrative where the focus of the entire film or drama is marriage. "I'm married, I have two kids, I shouldn't have to go through this anymore," she laughed.

Gilani added how ZEE5 is like a dream come true, something all the artists of Pakistan had been praying for all these years. "I remember Nimra pointed out a few years ago how women of her age are not even written about. Our dramas start from a girl's college life, move forward to her domestic issues and that's about it."

After Churails, she hoped Pakistani television realises that there's a standard they need to meet.

"I think the kind of limitations PEMRA and all these people have imposed creates a facade on our screen. The stories that come out of that are not real," she continued. "It's unfortunate Pakistan doesn't have a platform for such progressive and real stories and It took another country to come in and rescue us," confessed the actor.

But in response to the criticism that surfaced after the series' trailer went viral – especially the kind that slammed Pakistani artists for working with an Indian streaming platform – Gilani maintained that artists and what they create cannot be confined.

"You cannot limit them to borders. Telling artists that you can't work with this country or that country is just ridiculous and childish. You can polish them, you can help them evolve, but you cannot contain them in a box," she reserved. 

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