It was a cold January evening in Lahore in 2018 when I saw Kiran Malik acting in a three-and-a-half-hour rough cut of Zarrar at Shaan Shahid’s house.

In her third or fourth scene, I leaned in close to Shaan, and asked him: “Where did you find her?”

“Impressive, no?” Shaan replied, his eyes shining bright in triumphant delight at having discovered a new rising star.

It’s a pity people will never get to see the retakes from Zarrar; if anything, it would give one an idea of just how “impressive” Kiran Malik is, even as a newbie actor.

For someone who hadn’t faced a film camera till then, Malik, a well-known model whose day job is that of an HR consultant, has an uncanny gift of following her director’s cue with pinpoint precision.

Kiran plays her namesake in Zarrar, a morally flawed, emotionally aggrieved news anchor who gets a harrowing wake-up call at a crucial juncture in the movie.

From the catwalk to facing the camera, it hasn’t all been a cakewalk for model-turned-actress Kiran Malik, who also holds a steady corporate career. But slowly and gradually, she is making her mark

Two months passed before I met Kiran for the first time at Shaan’s house. We didn’t chat much that night but I do remember finding her smart, sensible and mature.

While Zarrar had its nip and tucks edited out, Kiran had signed another film, Pinky Memsaab (PM). By October that year, I was invited to see PM at Satish Anand’s office in Karachi, months before it came out in the cinemas.

One could see Shaan’s influence on Kiran’s essaying of Mehr, her character in PM with Shazia Ali Khan’s no-nonsense direction being an added benefit for a — presumably — still green actress.

I ran into her again, briefly, at the press launch for PM in December. Eveready (Anand’s company), distributed PM despite knowing its lack of business potential in the country. But regardless of PM’s box office and Zarrar’s nearly below-the-radar presence at the time, Kiran suddenly began to get acting offers. We wouldn’t find an opportunity to properly speak again for a year.

Having declined a television drama she was offered at the time, Kiran will soon be making two appearances on the big-screen, aside from Shaan’s film — in director-writer Faisal Qureshi’s star-studded comedy heist Money Back Guarantee (MBG), followed by a song cameo in the Adnan Siddiqui-produced, Mohammad Ehtashamuddin-directed Dum Mastam (DM).

“If you ask me whether I’m going to do another song cameo in another film, I’d say ‘No’. Despite thoroughly enjoying it, I know this is not me. I think I’ll stick to acting,” she now tells me in a voice message.

Doing Adnan Siddiqui’s film was a no-brainer, I assume; he had been urging Kiran to act for years.

“It’s been 12 to 13 years since I started modelling,” she tells me. “I was, still am, will always be, a corporate person. It is my full-time job which I’m not going to leave. Being a model and an actress is on the side,” she says, her agenda, as clear as the street I’m standing on is of people, because of the coronavirus lockdown. I’m taking a much needed walk outside after being cooped up inside. How does she feel about the lockdown in Dubai, where she lives?

“I was busy shooting Money Back Guarantee for the past two to three months, between November to February. So, when the coronavirus hit, I was very appreciative of the downtime I got for the first two weeks,” she says.

Kiran loved this self-isolation time, she tells me, lazing around on the sofa, enjoying being home with her 12-year old daughter Imaan.

Imaan is a shy but smart kid who is going through her independent phase. Nearly a teenager, she prefers to not accompany her mum to events. When she was little, Imaan used to go with Kiran for Pakistan Fashion Week, where other models would look out for her. “She’s been very used to the lifestyle of mommy going to work every day,” Kiran says.

Imaan recently accompanied Kiran to Bafta Piccadilly in London, where PM was screened. London, I assume from our conversation, plays a very important part in her life. It was there she made her modelling debut during a charity fashion event for HSY, whom she had met for the first time.

“If you ask me whether I’m going to do another song cameo in another film, I’d say ‘No’. Despite thoroughly enjoying it, I know this is not me. I think I’ll stick to acting.”

“Inside us both is a big Lahori, and when you meet someone from home in another country, you feel a strong sense of attachment,” she says.

“Walking on the ramp, you feel you’re pretty. It’s a different experience,” she says. “I met Athar Shehzad when I came to Pakistan the following week, and they took me on board.” From that moment onwards, there was a lot of flying between Pakistan and London, especially during fashion weeks.

Little by little, Kiran was getting noticed by the industry, and brands such as Mobilink. “I was also the face of IBM in London, [with the campaign running heavily at] Heathrow Airport,” she says.

Kiran tells me that she has worked with every name in the industry from HSY, Kamiyar Rokni, Umar Sayeed, Faraz Mannan, Bunto Kazmi, you name it. Over the years, modelling has given her the added confidence to become an independent young woman.

“I was a very shy girl before. I wasn’t how I’m now. Modelling broke my shell,” she says, crediting it with empowering her to branch out and succeed.

It’s been five years since Kiran shifted to Dubai to be close to her family. Self-describing herself as a “gharayloo [homebody] type,” Kiran likes to throw parties and get-togethers whenever possible.

With the Covid-19 outbreak, there are no more parties. However, Kiran’s life still starts as usual at 6:30 in the morning; it has been the same for as long as she can remember. Working from home, she is not as busy as she usually is, so rather than loiter around, Kiran has found ways to keep herself active.

“I’ve started making fitness videos and putting them up on my Instagram. The exercises are easy and people can do them with their parents. Other than that, I think I’ve become a good chef, trying recipes from books and YouTube,” she explains.

Our conversation leads us to Zarrar soon enough.

“I was in Karachi for a wedding and Shaan was at a coffee shop with Hammad Chaudhry [of HKC Entertainment]. When we met, Shaan kept staring at me, and I asked Hammad, ‘why is he staring at me like that’,” she says.

Shaan saw the potential even she didn’t know she had. Yet, despite been enamoured by the idea of working with Shaan, she asked him to narrate the entire story before committing to the project.

“It took a while for me to convince myself to find the time to do Zarrar. Travelling between Lahore and Dubai [was just too much to handle] but, thankfully, Shaan worked according to my schedule.”

Is Shaan difficult to work with, I ask Kiran.

“Shaan is a totally different person on set. As soon as he arrives, he sits in a corner for half-an-hour to take in the feel of his surroundings, and then he makes changes on the script then and there.”

Shaan is also quite flexible with his actors, she says. “For example, he was adamant about some lines, and others, he told me, I could explain to the audience in my own way.

“There is a comfort zone — I was not scared of approaching him, I could go to him and say anything. He is very humble on set. He would be a director and actor at the same time, while doing 10 things at a time.

“Because Zarrar was my first film, for the first 15 days I didn’t even know which angle to look at,” she continues. “People on the set used to joke that I was the first actress who had no idea how she would appear in the film. That is where Shaan would come up to me and tell me to not worry about the technicalities, and that he would make sure that I would look good in Zarrar.”

What about the delay in the film’s release? “Shaan is a perfectionist,” she tells me. “Because it is his baby, he wants to do everything by himself. He’s written the film and he’s directing it. It’s an action film that is coming after a while in Pakistan, so he’s making sure that it’s as perfect as it can be.”

Nevertheless, a part of Kiran did pine for Zarrar to have released earlier. It’s a commercial film, she says, not an indie such as PM. Indie films are not appreciated in Pakistan, she tells me.

The experience was also worlds apart. Zarrar had a divided schedule that spanned months. PM, working with a smaller crew in comparison, had finished its entire shooting spell in a month.

Despite her self-acknowledged limited visibility in the film world, she was surprised to one day get a call from Faisal Qureshi for MBG.

“At that time, I did not know that the film had Fawad Khan, Waseem Akram, Gohar Rasheed, Mikaal Zulfiqar, Mani and Jan Rambo [Afzal Khan] in the cast. [Faisal] did say the film has a lot of big names, and that there are just two to three female characters.”

“I’m very particular about work,” Kiran continues. “I’m not going to be a part of a film or a drama just for the sake of doing it. I don’t mind doing a film even if the role has 10 minutes of screen time. I have zero hang-ups if the story doesn’t revolve round me. I just want to have good scripts. It was the same in modelling. I was never a supermodel. I was a known model who was liked by the designers,” she says.

“Fame can be very addictive as well, so I don’t like to associate myself with anything that may become my weakness. I would rather do a film every two years that people would remember. [For example], I was in a grocery store in Los Angeles last year where an Indian couple approached me, asking, ‘Aren’t you the Memsaab from Pinky Memsaab?’ and that made me feel like ‘Wow!’ That’s what I want. That is what I have achieved.”

If you have your head squarely on your shoulders, you do tend to get noticed.

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 19th, 2020