Yasir Nawaz is having a bad hair day. “Does it look okay?” he asks as I fiddle with my camera’s setting. Half-glancing at him, I see him sprawled on the sofa opposite me, cuddling a small reddish-coloured cushion (the room is dimly-lit). I notice that his right collar is bent inwards, his eyes all puffed-up and his lower lip drying up due to dehydration. Either Nawaz had just woken up or Ramazan’s getting to him.

“The hair’s fine,” I tell him. I take a few snaps and then promptly delete them. The hair’s the least of his problems. Nawaz’s upcoming directorial venture, Wrong No. 2, a comedy of errors, comes out this Eidul Fitr — and it is having a rough time with the critics.

Some are unjustifiably upset by the trailer, primed to bash the film before it releases. Others don’t like the casting (the film stars Neelum Muneer, Sami Khan, Sana Fakhar, Javed Sheikh and himself). A few are up in arms against the trailer, and the recently released song, Tu hi harr rung mein, for not showing the young lead pair as much. (If anything, the song spoils important story elements).

Frankly, it’s a lot of hullaballoo over nothing — but this time, it’s not getting to Nawaz, who waves the criticism off with an unconcerned shrug of his shoulders. Nearly three films old, he’s less angry with the world. With an air of maturity and hopelessness, he says: “Dou kaan Allah nay kyun diye hain? [Why has God given us two ears?] The bad reviews don’t affect me anymore. Everyone has a right to agree or disagree. I recently shelled out 900 rupees per ticket for Avengers: End Game — and it shook me. So, people have the right to say that they didn’t like the film. They’re paying good money to see it.”

After the rather loud Wrong No. and the attention-dispersing Mehrunnisa V Lub U, director Yasir Nawaz hopes to silence critics once and for all and also redeem himself with his Eid release, Wrong No. 2

But doesn’t the criticism hurt, I ask. Both of us are aware that I was one of the critics who felt that the first Wrong No. was too loud and crass, and the follow-up film, Mehrunisa V Lub U [MVLU], should’ve been strangled in the crib.

“Bohat lagti hai [It hurts a lot], but at the end of the day, it’s about the film connecting with the audience. With Wrong No., I saw that the audience liked the film. With MVLU, I realised that people’s attention started drifting.”

Amongst other things, I tell him. “I shouldn’t have made the last 15 minutes of MVLU serious. It was a misjudgment at my end,” he agrees. With a gap of a year, and retrospection, Nawaz is more malleable, compliant and accommodating.

“Television was subtler once. Films were loud. You may remember the Maula Jutt films of Pakistan, or Indian cinema in the ’80s and ’90s. Today, it’s the other way round. Wrong No. 2, is not as loud as the first part, and it has more emotions,” Nawaz asserts.

An experienced drama director, has he learned anything new filmmaking-wise, I ask, now that he’s on his third film? “Third ... I’d still be learning if it was my 300th film,” he booms. Calling out my name with enthusiasm, he suddenly perks up, “With God as my witness, I learned three, four new things that would make you go ‘Hey, Yasir! You didn’t even know this’?”

What these things are, he wouldn’t tell — but simply stressed that they are simple, rudimentary things. I snap a tight-close-up; the camera settings finally in place.

“Should we move to the right? The light’s better over there,” Nawaz asks, and we scoot over to a huge window overlooking an alley, leading to what I assume is the garden. I notice that he’s still clutching the pillow.

Between the next few unprompted snaps, Nawaz and I go over his acting career: how he started as an actor, worked with directors such as Ayub Khawar and Mehreen Jabbar, and eventually realised that he wasn’t getting good enough roles.

“My father warned me about jumping into direction, but then my first drama got a good response, then the second one, then Sultana Siddiqui and Geo started calling. Eventually, I got bored with drama, so I started the sitcom Nadaaniyaan. At the time, I hadn’t done comedy.”

The comedy soon became a problem for Nawaz.

“Myself together with Nida Yasir and Danish Nawaz were established names by ourselves at the time. It’s not like Nadaaniyaan was there to support struggling actors,” he tells me. And then there were the fights.

“You were seeing comedy. At the back of the camera, it was serious drama. We weren’t getting along. I wanted to stop at the 25th episode, but the network pushed me to do 52, because it was still going strong. By the 108th episode, I had told the network I would be shutting the production down. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Then came another dilemma. “People had started to associate me with comedy.” Nawaz broke away from the mould by having a serious role written for himself in the drama serial Chup Raho.

With films, however, he is sticking to what he believes will work … for now. A few months back, Nawaz had told me that he was ready to start production of a thriller, but stopped because the audience wasn’t interested in genres other than family entertainers. That film may be his fifth, sixth or even seventh film — but not his fourth.

“I’ve been directing for 12-15 years now. I made dramas by tuning into my inner woman. You know who you are catering to. On the other hand, there are very few men who sit down to see Pakistani dramas. They might see the news, or catch sports on TV, but very rarely a drama. With film, it is the other way round. Families do come, but men come by tolis [groups].”

Some tell-tale signs in Wrong No. 2’s trailer give me all the insight I need to know about the story, its Bollywood influence and Nawaz’s stance on the type of film he still wants to make. For me, Wrong No. 2’s biggest selling point is Nawaz himself, in a prominent co-lead role; one, I wager, will impact the entire narrative of the film.

A half-pleased smile spreads on Nawaz’s face — and I snap another candid picture.

“He’s a common man who can’t make ends meet. Although he is one of the leads, he’s not the hero per se.” Nawaz defines his role as someone who has “Do bacchay, aik biwi, aur pait bhi nikla hua hai [Two kids, a wife and a pot belly].

“But I’m losing weight, these days,” he promptly adds, so that he looks good at the premiere.

Capturing the attention of the family audience is one of the reasons why Nawaz is shifting gears in Wrong No. 2 — and the reason why he is deliberately targeting Eidul Fitr. Wrong No. 2 was initially set to come out during the summer, but for the last four or five years Eid falls in the middle of summer, so it can’t be helped, he tells me. “Also, the working class, the salesmen, the mazdoor [labourers] — they only get time to watch Pakistani films on Eid.”

After Pakistani producers vehemently pushed away Indian films, I remind him.

“Wrong No. was a hit, and it came out with Bajrangi Bhaijan,” he reminds me. “Indian films shouldn’t be banned,” he continues. “Back then, I had requested that we delay Indian movies by a week or two, so that Pakistani films at least get a few weeks’ head start.”

Sometime later, Nawaz and I are sitting in his 4x4 SUV. The vehicle feels gargantuan for two men of average height. “Not right now, maybe in a few years when our children are making movies, Pakistani films will make as much money as any Bollywood film. Right now, we’re in a state where we are filtering out directors. We need ones who consistently deliver films. So far, we are only a handful, with Nadeem Baig, Wajahat Rauf, Nabeel Quraishi and myself, but we still need more. Just four or five directors with their fourth, fifth or sixth film will not change the industry.

“We’re still weak. As a director, at least I am,” he humbly confesses as an after-thought. “I still have to convince people to believe in me, until they instinctively start to follow my movies. That will take time. Hopefully, Wrong No. 2 will be a step in that direction.”

Published in Dawn, ICON, May 26th, 2019