Give Asma Abbas a meaty acting role and she can make it spectacular.

Give her the role of a truant wife, of a mother devoted to her handicapped child, of a woman with a constantly varying moral compass, or of a grandmother delivering hilarious one-liners, and watch her shine.

This is something that I have observed often while watching the actress in a particularly interesting role. It is also something that has perturbed me when I have seen her relegated (far too often) into the character of a cookie-cutter evil, greedy mother-in-law.

It’s one of the first things that I ask her when we meet: does it distress her when, despite proving her mettle time and again, drama-makers offer her boring, generic roles?

“The interesting characters with shades only come along once in a while, like an answer to a prayer,” she quips. “Mostly, the roles that come our way are not so exciting. Perhaps, the audience wants to see the more typical stories and that’s what gets the ratings. I can’t sit at home and cook handi while I wait for unique roles!”

She’s often compared to her illustrious sister Bushra Ansari, so she tries to steer clear of comedies that make the comparison more stark. She left acting for 20 years to be with her husband and to raise their children. But having made a comeback after fighting off cancer, Asma Abbas is willing to do whatever roles come her way, knowing that, when the rare meaty ones come, she can truly set the screen on fire

It’s a pragmatic observation, delivered with a dash of dry humour. This is how Asma Abbas is.

Professional pragmatism

She is well aware of the magic that she can bring to the screen but she has also accepted that, in the TV drama-scape, magic often isn’t required. Directors and producers are looking for a dash of masala rather than a nuanced performance, a vitriolic saas-bahu equation, a deluge of scheming and taunting calculated to hike up viewership ratings.

And while she may not particularly enjoy the typical roles, she’s very likely to shrug her shoulders and play them while she waits for the occasional standout project to come her way.

At the time I meet the actress, she is in her element as a tongue-in-cheek, clever phuppo [paternal aunt] in ARY Digital’s Baby Baji Ki Bahuwain. She also recently put out a remarkably fine performance in Mann Jogi on Hum TV Network, of a mother willing to twist the truth in order to ensure that her son gets his way. But in sharp contrast to her on-screen matriarchal characters, she’s opted for a glamorous look for our interview.

Dressed in an electric blue kaftan, her hair is straightened, her eyes lined heavily with kohl and she’s wearing an assortment of statement jewellery that she tells me she bought in Turkey.

“Zara chose this outfit for me,” she says, referring to her daughter, actress Zara Noor Abbas. “I come to Karachi just for work, so I just bring the regular shalwar qameez with me that I have to wear in drama shoots. But Zara always wants me to dress glamorously!”

The drama shoot that she is working on is for Baby Baji Ki Bahuwain, I ask. “Yes, and it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon!” she says. “It’s a daily drama that was originally planned to go on for 50 episodes, but it is likely that it will stretch on to 60.

“We just all get into character and start improvising and our director Tehseen Khan enjoys it so much that he just lets us go on without saying ‘Cut!’. It’s a lot of fun. We’re all veterans on the set and we add a little spice to our characters when we feel that a scene is a bit bland. Also, as we shoot, new scenes may get added in, like flashbacks.”

She continues, “There are days when the team will suddenly tell me that I am not required on set and other days when I will be shooting till 2am in the night! I don’t mind. I am here from Lahore to shoot this drama and it’s not like I have crying children waiting for me at home. I can give it as much time as required, as long as we wrap up by November. I want to be home in November to prepare for my youngest son’s wedding in December!”

Our conversation instantly veers from her professional responsibilities to the all-encompassing requirements of a family wedding.

“All my preparations are done. The clothes are stitched, the venues are booked. My husband’s taken a backseat, letting me do all the running around this time and, because my work schedule tends to vary, I just got everything done beforehand. Still, I want to be home to enjoy the festivities and to organise the daily dholkis and look after all the guests who will be coming.”

And Baby Baji would have wrapped up by then? “They have assured me that it will have,” she says. “I have acted in two Ramazan plays, Chupke Chupke and Chaudhry and Sons, and it had been exhausting. A lot of work is required when a drama’s episode is aired daily and it can just go on and on. And now, I have taken up Baby Baji which has even more episodes, inn donon ka baap! [the granddaddy of them all!]” She laughs.

On a more serious note, she adds, “Actually, I had shot both Ramazan plays during very difficult circumstances. My sister, Sumbul baji,passed away in between the shooting of Chupke Chupke and my mother was severely ill while Chaudhry and Sons was being shot.

“I would constantly be on edge, on alert that I would hear bad news about my mother at any time. And then, I would wipe my tears and shoot scenes that were mostly all comical. It was very tough. Thankfully, I am shooting Baby Baji Ki Bahuwain in happier times.”

Has she ended up missing out on other projects because her dates have been committed to the long Baby Baji schedule? “I’ve had to say no to six, actually,” says Asma. “Three of them were dramas that are being directed by some of TV’s very best: Kashif Nisar, Farooq Rind and Saqib Khan. I regret it, but once I have made a commitment, I can’t back out of it. I did manage to agree to one drama after getting permission from the Baby Baji team. It’s going to be directed by Marina Khan.”

She continues, “To be honest, I hardly ever read scripts now. When a drama gets offered to me, I just ask some basic questions: am I rich or poor, what kind of clothes will I need to wear, will I be speaking in Urdu or Punjabi? Usually, that’s more than enough, and then I can go over the dialogues on set.”

But what if the drama is a Mann Jogi, I ask, referring to her recent project directed by Kashif Nisar and written by Zafar Mairaj, in which she performed brilliantly? “Yes, and then there is a Mann Jogi,” she smiles.

“When I was on the set of Mann Jogi, I would simply sit in a corner and learn my lines. And then, when I knew them and the camera would record, the words would come from my heart and my body language and facial expressions would just come to me naturally.

“When such work comes, you simply want to do your best. My character in Mann Jogi was also a mother-in-law, but her relationship with her daughter-in-law was not typical. She loved her but, then, she was also willing to go to extreme lengths for her son. There were so many shades to her.”

She adds: “Similarly, the mother I enacted in the drama Ranjha Ranjha Kardi had a son who was mentally disabled. No one can understand the pain that a mother in such a predicament must go through.

“There are some writers whose scripts I fear and also yearn for, and that I learn by heart. One is Zafar Mairaj, another is Fasih Bari Khan and, then, Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar. I had left the industry when I got married and I joined it again after about 20 years. My work experience had been limited till then. But then the first two soaps that I acted in were written by Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar. I learnt from those scripts.

“Now, when you are working on a script like that of Mann Jogi, with a director as involved as Kashif Nisar, it would be a crime not to know the dialogues. Kashif’s set is very organised. He doesn’t say much and he doesn’t shoot unnecessary takes. On a set like that, I have a reputation to uphold as a senior actor, and if I go about fumbling my lines then fittay munh [shame on me]!”

Her occasional Punjabi exclamations remind me of her elder sister, actress Bushra Ansari, who I have also interviewed from time to time. Does she get compared to her often?

“We are sisters, often our body language, expressions and voices seem very similar,” she points out. “Whenever I look pretty, people on drama sets tell me I am looking like Bushra Aapa! One of the reasons I opt to act in very few comedy dramas is because she has worked in a lot of comedies and the comparisons will begin instantly.”

On awards and rewards

Her sister may be a talented powerhouse but so is Asma. Has she ever become fixated with winning awards?

“I don’t think much about awards now, because I have come to terms with the fact that I won’t get them,” she says. “I did get nominated once for a drama. It had been one in which I hadn’t wanted to act initially, called Daldal. I didn’t win, which was alright. But I did feel upset when I was overlooked for my work in the dramas Chupke Chupke and Ranjha Ranjha Kardi.

“In Chupke Chupke, both Uzma Hassan and I played daadis [grandmothers], and our characters were pivotal to the story. That year, so many people who worked in that drama won awards, from the director to the two leads. Meanwhile, forget being awarded or even nominated, we weren’t even invited to the ceremony!”

Why, though? “I don’t know, perhaps they don’t like me,” she smiles. “These things happen. My award is when people stop me on the street and tell me that they like my work. Or when Mann Jogi was airing and Kashif called me from Turkey and told me that everyone was talking about my performance.

“Kashif is not a very expressive director. He will quietly go about his work and you won’t see him clapping or praising his performers on set. For him to say this to me was an award in itself.”

The personal frontier

The conversation on Mann Jogi could go on and on — the drama was a masterclass in storytelling — but I ask a question that takes the conversation off-kilter, into personal territory. Having been aware of the politics that prevail in the entertainment industry, did she ever discourage her daughter Zara Noor Abbas from venturing into the same profession?

“No, she really enjoys acting,” says Asma. “In the beginning, she was too trusting and talkative. Her husband [actor Asad Siddiqui] is more discerning, but he let Zara go about doing what she wanted, making friends with different people. She just had to learn the hard way that friendships here aren’t real. She now knows better.”

She adds, “And even Zara sometimes feels disillusioned about awards, but she now has a baby daughter, her firstborn, and she says that God has given her the best gift of all.”

Asma herself quit her career while her children were young. Why? “I quit work after my marriage because my husband didn’t want me to work,” she says, “and it was as simple as that. No one had ever told me to take a stand. All I knew was that, once you get married, you just do what your husband says. I started working again after being married for about 20 years.”

By then her husband was comfortable with her working? “Yes, by then he had understood me, understood the industry and had realised that there was nothing wrong with the profession.”

In an interview from not too long ago, she had recounted how she was her husband’s second wife. He had been devoted to his first wife but had then fallen in love with Asma and married her as well and, then, both wives had lived together. Had she not had any apprehensions of the reactions that such a personal story could have triggered?

“I haven’t been raised to lie and, besides, the message I was giving was a positive one,” she says. “Sometimes it does happen that a man marries twice. My husband married me because he liked me but also because he hadn’t been able to have any children from his first marriage. I was always very positive towards his first wife. I never told him to divorce her or restricted him from meeting her. She was like my sister. We would all go out together and she would sit in the car’s passenger seat while I sat in the back.”

Did it never make her insecure that, just like her husband had fallen in love with her despite being committed to his first wife, he might also fall for another?

“Maybe he did like someone else, but I was always sure that he couldn’t love anyone as much as he loved me,” she professes. “I was 23, young, and we shared a family together. Besides, all I ever said to him was ‘Yes sir, yes sir.’ It was just part of my nature. Any other woman he found would have said ‘No sir’ at some point and how could he have liked that?” she laughs.

She continues, “It takes patience to make a marriage last. Sometimes, you have to overlook small faults in order to appreciate the bigger picture. All through my life — except for maybe four years — my parents lived with me. My husband said that he was like their son and he took care of them to the extent that they wouldn’t want to live anywhere except with him. He fulfilled his responsibilities to the point that he even buried them. It is something that I will always be grateful to him for.”

In an Instagram post, Asma had recently recounted her battle with cancer. Was it tough getting back into life’s rigmarole after having beaten the disease?

“It was,” she says. “I didn’t get depressed all through the time that I was battling cancer. However, once I got better and returned home, I got depressed. I had seen a different world, seen the suffering in it, and it was difficult for me to return to my regular life. I remember my sister, Bushra Aapa, had given me 50,000 rupees when I returned home and told me to go and shop. I have always been a shopping buff but, on that day, when I went to the mall, I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything.

“Slowly, I got better. I acted in a movie, Mann Jao Naa, co-written by my friend Asma Nabeel who has passed away. I sang and danced in the movie.

“Now, I just want to see my children happy and settled. I want to spend more time with my husband and for both of us to enjoy our children.”

And of course she wants to act more? “Preferably in dramas that are shot in Lahore, because I feel guilty about leaving my husband alone at home,” she tells me.

What if it’s a really meaty role, in a drama being shot in Karachi? “Then that will be a difficult choice,” she nods.

Having got to know a bit about Asma Abbas in our two-odd-hours-long interview, I think that she’ll micromanage and plan and placate her husband and then rush off to the shoot in Karachi. Meaty roles in Pakistani entertainment are few and far between and it is difficult for actors to give them up.

Especially for an actor like Asma Abbas, who can add flesh and bones to her roles and transform them into something spectacular.

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 20th, 2024