Mashal from “Hum Kahan Kay Sachay Thay” has evolved to become one of the most fascinating female villains to grace the television screen this year, and with the latest episode on Sunday the main takeaway by the majority was how brilliantly the show and Kubra Khan the actress had executed the tragedy of Mashal which compelled her to become such a villain. Yesterday Fuschia magazine released an interview with Kubra Khan where she sat down to discuss how she and the director brought the character to life and the quirks that made her a unique person on screen.
The first thing was the specific item Mashal was constantly seen eating on screen which was coconuts. Kubra Khan said that she and the director had a very specific reason behind why they chose to show her eating this dry fruit in her room:
“The director decided to include scenes of Mashal eating in her room after he spotted me several times eating food on set. We decided that it would be coconut because we wanted to use a tool that needs a lot of energy to open it. This was a way she would demonstrate her anger.”
Another important aspect to Mashal’s personality was the range of emotions and Kubra said it was quite a challenge to portray but she learned to embrace it by completely adapting her character’s personality in order to understand why she has become such a villainous person
“Portraying the wide range of emotions Mashal had was quite difficult. In one scene for instance, the director would tell one person that they must be happy or sad, then he would turn to me and say “in this scene, you’re pretending to be happy but inside you’re sad, or you’re angry but you’re actually very depressed.” It was so confusing! I didn’t practice all of her emotions because this is what helps me in memorizing the dialogue. But what helped was that I completely adapted to Mashal’s personality in order to understand why she is the person she has become today. Because even though Mashal is a negative person, she wasn’t always this horrible because she was very close friends with Mehreeen and loved her a lot when they were children.”
On the slap scene from episode 7 that garnered a lot of criticism from fans, Kubra said that she and Mahira had discussed the scene before hand and decided it really wasn’t necessary:
“Mahira and I had discussed the slap initially and we did think it wasn’t something that was necessary to show because if you want to prove how villainous someone is, a slap is not necessary. Because to me as much as I see how Mashal is such a large character, she doesn’t need to have such over exaggerated actions all the time like slapping or screaming, so I tried to play her as under as possible. So this is why we didn’t go for the actual slap, but as you watch ahead and you connect the dots you’ll understand that Mashal is not the sole flawed character, and many people will make terrible mistakes because they’re human beings.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
