Tabish Hashmi reveals he turned down offer to work with Moin Akhtar

Host and comedian Tabish Hashmi recently made an appearance on Time Out with Ahsan Khan along with model Fahmeen Ansari, with the two speaking about their respective roads to success. While Tabish, who hosts the web talk show To Be Honest, revealed how his days of debating opened up the world of standup comedy to him and the offers he received along the way, PISA-winner Fahmeen shed light on what it takes to be a top model in Pakistan. 

Speaking about the success of his show, Tabish shared what sets it apart from the others on TV, “People can ask the questions they have [on my show]. They can clearly state their opinions, and because people aren’t used to such openness, they get scandalised. The things that are being said by the guest are probably common knowledge already, but it’s about the fact that they are coming directly from them.”

On what led her to bag the award for Model of the Year at PISA, Fahmeen reflected on her work during the pandemic, “When a model gets an award, it’s never based on one particular shoot. For a supermodel, it’s important to do runways, fashion shows, editorials as well as branch shoots. With Covid, work became very scarce. Fashion shows weren’t really happening, but even during the pandemic we did virtual fashion shows, we did Bridal Couture Week (BCW), we tried to do whatever we could. Based on that portfolio, on how a model is performing even during a crisis, that is what a model is judged on.”

Revealing details about his double-life in school and at home, with his antics being unknown to his family, Tabish shared that his journey towards comedy began when he first became involved in public speaking in 2004 while studying engineering. “I was very underconfident as a child. I would mostly just talk to myself. A lot of the time, people would say things and I would have the reply but not the confidence to say it to them. Over the years, the comebacks kept accumulating and they’re just now being let out,” he revealed.  

Highlighting how his journey has been a relatively comfortable one, he shared, “My story doesn’t really have a lot of struggle in it. I was working in a very senior position here when I left Pakistan [for Canada].” 

Tabish continued, “I never really planned to reach out to anyone. I knew the director Azfar Ali since 2008, and he wanted to make a telefilm called Baarish ki Deewar which was big back in the day. It was based on debaters, so he asked around for names of debaters that were in the market at the time. My name came up and I ended up writing it with him. He watched a few of my standups and said that he wanted to make a show with me, but at the time I was working a good job and had no interest in being famous. I told him I’d do it and ended up ghosting him and going for chai with my friends.”

Reconnecting in 2017 at a standup, the duo finally went ahead with the idea. “This may sound boastful, but when we filmed the first six episodes of the show in 2018… the people we were recording with were also having a great time,” explained Tabish. He added, “They said [a show like this] hadn’t been done before. The episodes were released a year after the recording… I had already moved to Canada by then and I was trying to establish myself there, and I was becoming a hit back home.” 

Revealing details about her shift in careers from nursing to modelling, Fahmeen cited the lack of financially stable opportunities for nurses in Pakistan as a reason for the switch. 

“I completed my nursing education from Dublin, Ireland in 2011,” the model shared, adding, “I left it because after I came back to Pakistan, there was no real scope for it. Here, it’s not so much nursing, but more of a health care assistant, because abroad, the health care system is huge and highly paid. It’s a respectful job. There, children don’t care for their parents throughout their lives, so they reside in old homes. They teach us how to care for the elderly in the final stages of their lives. This results in nurses acquiring a great deal of experience and working hand in hand with doctors.”  

On the viral moment from his show with guest Hareem Shah in which the TikToker and actor called up politician Sheikh Rasheed, Tabish clarified, “I hadn’t even finished the question. I wanted to ask, ‘If you were to call Sheikh Rasheed,’ the name just slipped out. And I wanted to go on and say, ‘And he was to pick up and say so and so,’ but I couldn’t get that far. She just said, ‘I’ll do it now.’  Now, tell me, what does a person not do for TRP? So, I asked her to go ahead with it.” 

When asked to respond to statements attributed to him about the star power of Umer Sharif as compared to Moin Akhtar, Tabish shared, “It’s a fact that several of our stage artists who have worked with Umer Sharif continue to use his lines and comebacks. They are so iconic that they seem like they are a part of our language.”

Recounting an incident with Moin Akhtar from back in Tabish’s early days of comedy, he shared, “Moin Akhtar came to my university once to judge a comedy show for which I was a co-judge as well. We were supposed to perform together at the end and he liked it so much that he gave me his personal number and told me to come and work with him. I was around 22 at the time, and a university professor of mine told me that Moin Akhtar is such an institution… he is at the peak of his popularity and that he’d only give me a small role… people would only recognise me in relation to Moin Akhtar. I found that advice very wise.”