Mahira Khan has begun her journey as a producer alongside Nina Kashif, with the Danyal Zafar, Shahveer Jaffry, and Kinza Hashmi starring web series, Baarwan Khiladi.
Release And Plot
At a press junket held within the premises of Pearl Continental in Karachi, a sizeable chunk of the team – Danyal Zafar, Shahveer Jaffry, Kinza Hashmi, Zarrar Khan, Meer Yousuf, Khaqan Shahnawaz, Mahira Khan, Nina Kashif, Adnan Sarwar, and the minds behind TapMad – showed up to share their experiences, and what the audience can expect.
Slated to be released on Pakistan’s local OTT platform, TapMad on 5th March, Adnan Sarwar’s next directorial feat explores themes like nepotism, and an outsider’s struggle to make it big, through the larger lens of arguably the nation’s most beloved sport: cricket.
A No-Holds-Barred Approach
The entire crew, while sharing their varying experiences with regards to the process, all seemed to be in agreement over the fact that Baarwan Khiladi is an “unsanitized” take on the topics it tackles.
Indeed, Baarwan Khiladi has a surprising lack of sponsors, with Adnan and Mahira explaining that sponsors tend to water down content in many ways. With OTT being perhaps the last true free space, the dilution of a promising premise is a compromise that the team could not make.
“The content is strong,” stated Danyal Zafar. “It’s something new, different, and revolutionary.”
The men on the panel backed this opinion, with Khaqan Shahnawaz sharing that he would have forgone any fee for this to be his acting debut. Zarrar and Meer shared their gratitude for being able to be a part of the series, and Shahveer shared that the production process had a familial feel to it. This zone of comfort, perhaps, is the reason behind the iconic Fawad Khan and Shoaib Malik showing up for surprise cameos in the show.
Locker Room Talk
A character teaser aired during the press meet also showed Kinza Hashmi’s character confronting her on-screen brother about locker-room talk. As a woman in the audience, this came as a breath of fresh air, with it being an aggressively pertinent conversation.
Mahira’s Debut As A Producer
When asked about any apprehension when it came to stepping foot into the world of production, Mahira stated, “I’m putting my money where my mouth is.”
Her belief stems from the fact that often, people spend their time talking about the content Pakistan needs to see – produced locally and aired on a local platform – without doing much to create and execute those ideas to completion. Baarwan Khiladi is Mahira Khan taking herself upto that task, and from the looks of the teaser, she might just be geared up to prove naysayers wrong.
As March 5 approaches swiftly, our well wishes are with the team. Treading new water is a monumental task, and it will be intriguing to see if the names attached to the project are about to set a precedent for the kind of content that we can expect on local platforms, without feeling the need to consistently gaze elsewhere for similar thematic takes.
