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Yashma Gill wasn’t always the actor we all know and love — she was actually a psychologist before she appearing on our TV screens in dramas. The actor discussed her journey and how she had to face her father’s disapproval on ARY Digital’s Shan-e-Sahoor on Tuesday.

Gill told host Nida Yasir she had been sent to Australia for higher education by her parents where she studied psychology. After her studies, she said she came back to Karachi and began working at a hospital — which didn’t really pay much.

She came home after a late shift one day and was surprised to see her ageing father leaving the house at 6am. She remembered asking him where he was going, to which he said he was heading to work.

Gill said seeing her father work so hard to support her made her realise she wanted to do what she could to help him, which meant taking up acting as her career. “I told my mother, ‘Mama, even if Baba gets angry, God knows my intent, I am doing this to help him.’”

Her mother was supportive, but the actor said her father stopped speaking to her for a whole year. “Mama would be supportive, but Baba was like — there’s this [misconception] about our field — he was quite upset.”

It was in Ramazan, Gill recalled, that she greeted her father one day when he entered the room. She then told him it was religiously mandated for Muslims to return greetings, which is how the ice between them began to melt.

She said the issue was later put to rest when she took her father for Umrah, where fans sent her gifts and showed great admiration for her work. Her father, she told Yasir, felt his daughter must be doing something right in life if she was being shown such respect in the house of God.