The Ali Zafar-Meesha Shafi controversy has given birth to another escalating controversy. We are talking about growing tensions in the Ali Zafar-Jami side of the issue. Twice now, Ali Zafar has gone on record on national television and dragged down Jami first by accusing him of being jealous of Ali Zafar’s popularity and then by accusing Jami of owing Ali Zafar unpaid dues. YIKES!
While Jami had retained a rather dignified stance in response to Ali Zafar’s accusations, we reached out to him to get more details on his side of the story.
For those who might have missed out on this issue, Ali Zafar had come on a show hosted by Mubashir Luqman where Ali Zafar accused Jami of non-payment of dues when Ali had shot a commercial directed by Jami. Ali said that when he had brought up the issue of the dues with Jami, he had been served with a court case instead. This incident happened in 2004. According to Ali, he fought the case in court for a decade and came out victorious.
Jami’s side of the story
Jami, however, has a completely different story to tell. Sharing more details about this case in question, Jami explained that the non-payment issue that Ali Zafar and Mubashir Luqman have brought up on national television was due to Ali’s own actions.
“They are mentioning me on record and bringing up the fact that I directed the “Chal Dil Merey” music video. Both say that I haven’t pay Ali Zafar for some job. He needs to clarify, which job? The Sony Walkman ad that we did, he was promised 10 lacks for it I think, the client would’ve paid him his dues like they did for the other actors. But right after doing the Sony Walkman mega launch event, he went ahead and did an LG phone ad. This destroyed the launch of Walkman in Pakistan. Sony Global was furious with us all, as I was the one who got him in the ad. We lost millions in payments. The agency got fired and Ali Zafar was sued, yes, sued by the agency. Now he says he won the case. He needs to prove it.”
Jami also reiterated his stance that he has no personal agenda or battle against Ali Zafar. He stands in full support of the #MeToo movement and that he is against how this issue is being hijacked to make it an Ali Zafar-Jami issue. As for Ali Zafar’s accusations that Jami is doing this because he is jealous of Teefa in Trouble’s success, Jami brought up the special teaser that he had shot for the film as a sign of goodwill for the film.
“I was helping Teefa till the news of the accusations came out. I was making teasers for it out of my own film. I was taking portions from Moor and making little clips about “Teefa kaun hai?” There is no question about the film’s success because the film wasn’t even released back then. I was just helping him and Ahsan Rahim, who is a friend, out. What does Ali mean that I am against anyone who is successful? I don’t speak anything against Laal Kabootar or Cake.”
Jami also shared his tweet from back in 2016 where he had praised and supported Ali Zafar’s song and performance in his Coke Studio hit Rockstar and captioned it, “This is how I treated his success.”
Jami is in full support of the #MeToo movement
On the topic of Lux Style Awards, Jami maintained his stance that he is fully in support of the #MeToo movement and said that it is “disrespectful and hypocritical” of a platform to promote the movement one year and then completely disregard it in the next year.
“#MeToo is a global movement. We have just raised one point for the LSAs that whoever has been accused should be sidelined for the time being until the case is resolved. What is so shocking about that? This is how it’s been done globally.”
We hope this would put an end to this little controversy that has happened for no good reason whatsoever. As Jami said, it is unfair that the original topic is getting derailed and becoming all about an issue that is completely unrelated to the importance and seriousness of a global movement like #MeToo.
