Parental guidance is necessary for kids using TikTok: Hajra Yamin

As they gear up for the release of their upcoming drama, Meray Apney, actors Hajra Yamin and Ali Abbas recently made an appearance on actor Ahsan Khan’s show Time Out. From spilling the beans on their individual journeys in the Pakistani entertainment industry to talking about sharing the screen and the future of their careers, the actors had a lot to say.

Yamin claimed that Abbas is her favorite co-star to work with. “Whenever we work together, Ali and I call each other out a lot when we don’t give our scenes our best” she claimed. Going back to the start of their careers, Yamin revealed that she knew she wanted to be an actor after watching a theatre play at the age of 13. She got her start in theatre and then moved towards working in films and TV. Abbas, on the other hand, spoke about being a third-generation actor with his grandfather being Inayat Hussain Bhatti – one of the greatest Pakistani film playback singers of all time.

Abbas also revealed that he was never allowed inside studios as a child. “It was a conscious effort on my grandfather’s part,” he mentioned. “The greatest emphasis was put on education and I think it paid off for me.” When Khan asked which one of his performances was his father Waseem Abbas’s favourite, the actor talked about his drama titled Tum Kon Piya, where he starred alongside Imran Abbas and Ayeza Khan. “That was the first time my father acknowledged that I was doing something meaningful.”

Yamin also spoke of the importance of education, talking about being the youngest of six well-educated siblings, with some of them holding two masters. Hence, she claimed that the pressure of doing something great was immense. The actor believes that Pinky Memsab has been her most memorable and successful role to date mostly because of Netflix. “When it was released in cinemas here, it was still a niche watch,” claimed the actor. “When it went up on Netflix, it was trending in India and Pakistan which was a breakthrough moment for me.”

Compared to their own journeys as actors, Yamin and Abbas spoke to Khan about acting being different for different people. Khan agreed and said that while some people took their art seriously enough to educate themselves in it, others just followed their instincts and passion. The actors engaged in a conversation about acting becoming more accessible to the masses because of social media platforms such as TikTok. According to Abbas, “You open TikTok and everybody is an actor.” When Khan quipped in and mentioned how traditional acting is still different from ‘TikTok acting’, Yamin responded by saying that the video-sharing platform is a different genre altogether.

The conversation then took a turn towards children who are working and earning money through TikTok, with both the actors expressing their concern for the platform having no age limit. Yamin said, “When I see children doing all of this, it hits me and I think that some parental guidance is necessary here.” 

When asked about her upcoming projects, Yamin revealed that she was working on an interesting project, playing the role of an older woman. Titled Ek Gunah Aur Sahi, the drama will follow Yamin’s character through different stages in her life and features a lot of storytelling through flashbacks. “I’m very lucky to have worked on a Naila Ansari script. I couldn’t let it go,” said Yamin.

She further went on to talk about how the drama industry had no roles for women. When Khan relayed how most dramas star women in the lead, Yamin said, “These characters have a lot of monotony. Only two out of 10 characters are different. Then you see veteran actors such as ZQ, Nadia Jamil, and Sania Saeed who have only been limited to playing moms, phuppos and khalas because there is no thinking out of the box.”

Khan chimed in and agreed that the Pakistani industry needs to treat veteran actors with the respect that they deserve and offer them roles that are worth their talent, instead of restricting them to minor supporting roles. Taking his own father as an example, Abbas agreed that the roles that he receives now don’t do justice to his talent.

When asked what he would like to pursue in the near future, Abbas claimed that he wants to move towards directing. The actor said, “My career started as an assistant director. It has been a long journey since then but I believe that if I get into direction, I can tackle some new subjects.”

Abbas spoke of how Yamin always advocates for not having unnecessary crying scenes in dramas. “It is not necessary for a female character to be crying in every scene,” she said. The two actors agreed on the fact that crying scenes and miserable female characters sell on screen. But both of them were of the opinion that the industry needs to move on from that now.  

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