{"id":14695,"date":"2025-09-13T23:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/14695\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T23:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T23:05:07","slug":"sanam-saeed-was-very-concerned-about-taking-on-a-khalilur-rehman-qamar-script-with-main-manto-nahi-hoon-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/14695\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanam Saeed was \u2018very concerned\u2019 about taking on a Khalilur Rehman Qamar script with Main Manto Nahi Hoon – Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sanam Saeed has returned to television after seven years with Main Manto Nahi Hoon, a drama shrouded by controversy for its teacher-student romance, its dialogue<\/a>, and its writer, Khalilur Rahman Qamar. In a candid conversation with Aamna Haider Isani on Haute Talk<\/a>, the actor shared why she agreed to take on the role of Miss Maria in the now-controversial drama.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year in June, I got a call from Nadeem Baig. I was finishing Jo Bache Hain Sang Samait Lo, I was in Europe, and I got a call,\u201d she recalled. \u201cHe said there\u2019s a role of a teacher and that I\u2019ll be good for it. I know that Main Manto Nahi Hoon was in the works for a long time, and that its cast has been changing and evolving over the years. So he named all the actors he had roped in by then, including Humayun Saeed and Sajal Aly. And I was like, I\u2019ve never worked with Humayun or Sajal before.\u201d<\/p>\n

She admitted that she had declined Baig\u2019s offer twice before \u2014 not because of the roles, but due to unavailability. \u201cThis time, if I had said no again, it would be like saying, \u2018don\u2019t ask me again\u2019. So this time I was like, here\u2019s a drama that\u2019s got Humayun and Sajal, it\u2019s a Khalilur Rehman Qamar script, but, let\u2019s see what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed for time, Saeed said she didn\u2019t read the entire script, just the portions involving her character. \u201cThis is the first time that I didn\u2019t read the whole script, just my parts. And I really enjoyed Miss Maria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Discovering Miss Maria<\/p>\n

The actor described Miss Maria as unlike any character she has played before. \u201cI never played a woman who behaves like she\u2019s Manto\u2019s wife, it\u2019s sweet. The writing doesn\u2019t mention her family; you just get to know that she\u2019s this teacher who\u2019s Manto\u2019s colleague, and both of them live in this teacher community. It\u2019s a one-way street of love because Manto\u2019s clearly not into her like that, but he\u2019s very much dependent on her. They\u2019re both friends, and it\u2019s okay for Miss Maria if he doesn\u2019t love her, but she\u2019s there for him, which I thought was very sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that Miss Maria\u2019s sari obsession made the role fun to play. \u201cI know a lot of the characters I\u2019ve done wore saris, so I was like, what can we do differently, so we tried the curly hair. I enjoyed that character because it felt different. I felt I looked unrecognisable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of her decision was also about returning to television. \u201cI was doing TV after seven years, so I really wanted to get my foot in the door again because I became so accustomed to films and series. Deedan was my last project. Because for me, I\u2019ve never cared about my role being big or small, heroine or not, as long as it\u2019s a fun role and you\u2019re doing it authentically, I\u2019ll be down.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the student-teacher controversy<\/p>\n

Addressing the debate around the drama\u2019s student-teacher romance, Saeed acknowledged the ethical concerns. \u201cYes, ethically, it\u2019s not right. A teacher and student cannot have a romantic relationship, and they won\u2019t unless she leaves the university. And you can see the way it is being depicted; there is that romantic tension between them. But at the end of the day, it\u2019s a story, it\u2019s fiction. The point of it is that love happens, it can happen, even if you don\u2019t want it to. It\u2019s not reality, it\u2019s not a documentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why audiences respond so strongly to such plot lines, she explained, \u201cBecause we have given them really good dramas that have taught some valuable lessons. People have had good role models in the shape of a character. So when an actor who played that character, a specific actor who\u2019s done such roles, takes on a different kind of role, then it shakes people\u2019s confidence in them a little bit. People say they didn\u2019t expect such a thing from this person.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for Saeed, playing diverse characters is essential. \u201cAt the end of the day, we get bored, we aren\u2019t here to give lessons, we\u2019re not real-life teachers, we have to diversify our portfolios. It\u2019s a privilege to be vessels through which certain messages are conveyed to the audience but we\u2019re just playing different characters \u2014 some you\u2019ll like, some you\u2019ll hate, some you\u2019ll idolise, and for some, you\u2019ll be like \u2018why did you do this\u2019 and even we\u2019ll be like, \u2018why did I do this?\u2019 But you won\u2019t know till you try. Next time, maybe we won\u2019t take a role that had a negative impact, or a role that was so small. But it\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

On working with a Khalilur Rehman Qamar script<\/p>\n

Saeed admitted she was apprehensive about signing onto a Qamar project. But she had the confidence that she could contest lines that felt outdated or perpetuated harmful attitudes, to play her part authentically without compromising her principles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very concerned that this was KRQ script. I was like \u2018what am I doing\u2019, \u2018how am I doing this\u2019, but I was confident that because of past scripts of his, that now change can be made, and if there are certain lines and dialogues that are concerning, someone like me can say that I\u2019m not doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she didn\u2019t have too many problematic lines herself, but her co-stars sometimes did. \u201cI was like, we need to reconstruct these just so that it\u2019s politically correct and sensitive. Just so that it is not problematic. Just small things like \u2018Mein usko bataonga\u2019, you can\u2019t say that anymore. So getting that changed. Or something like, laughing off someone\u2019s bad behaviour and capping that off with, \u2018this happens\u2019. No. It doesn\u2019t happen. And you can\u2019t say that. And Nadeem could pull that off. And I know Sajal also had to do the same in a few scenes, where she could. But times are changing, and I think one learns their lesson, and we were confident that because Baig sahab is directing, we will be able to contest if we don\u2019t feel something is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shooting while pregnant<\/p>\n

Another challenge Saeed faced was filming during her pregnancy. \u201cSo I wasn\u2019t initially expecting, and then I was. And I told them, guys my cutoff date is this, and after that, I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to do because it\u2019ll show. But the shoot continued even after my cutoff date because lining up actors on earlier dates was difficult. So I\u2019m on set even seven months pregnant. But when they shot me from the side, they hid my stomach with different things. Throughout, my clothes had to be resized. But I was seven months pregnant in many scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Saeed, Main Manto Nahi Hoon wasn\u2019t about offering moral lessons, nor was it about blindly following a script. She acknowledged that audiences now hold dramas and actors to high standards because of the strong role models television has produced, but insisted that artists must have the freedom to explore flawed, difficult or even uncomfortable narratives.<\/p>\n

In the end, her return to TV with Main Manto Nahi Hoon was about Miss Maria, the sari-obsessed teacher who quietly loves and supports Manto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sanam Saeed has returned to television after seven years with Main Manto Nahi Hoon, a drama shrouded by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-14695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}