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Sania Saeed says the burden of keeping a family together should never fall squarely on a woman’s shoulders. It’s a belief she kept returning to while discussing her role as the enabling and toxic mother-in-law in the HUM TV drama Aap Ki Izzat, and Beena’s story in the show — Sania’s on-screen daughter-in-law — is what she used to make her point.

“This obsession we have with keeping family together… this, invariably — whether we like it or not — keeps falling on the women, and it thrives on women’s integrity, self-respect and esteem,” Saeed said. “Don’t put the burden of upholding the institution of family on a woman — because she pays its price.”

In Aap Ki Izzat, that price is paid by Urwa Hocane’s Beena, the wife of Ahsan Khan’s Tabish. Saeed plays his mother — a woman who enables his neglect and mistreatment of Beena rather than intervening.

Saeed made the comments during an appearance on the podcast Heart to Haute with Hassan Choudary, where she told the host she had initially turned down the drama because it looked like “too much work.”

She said she was reluctant to take on the role but agreed at the insistence of director Saife Hasan, who she said was the right person to “handle a narrative like this one.”

The actor said characters like these were why people talked about actors throwing tantrums on set — because they were so exhausting to inhabit.

“Most of the time, we’re struggling so much internally, there’s so much internal dialogue, sometimes I would even say, ‘What is it?’ Everyone would then stop for two minutes, then [things would go back to normal]. I did get exhausted in between.”

Saeed said her character was helpless, which is why she resorted to being cruel and manipulative — being this way gave her some semblance of power within the patriarchal family structure. That is not to say her daughter-in-law wasn’t equally, if not more, helpless; her helplessness is what drove her to eventually run away from home.

“Beena has paid a price for building a happy and flourishing home,” Saeed said — the price of becoming “a lost and broken woman.”

“You [Tabish and her in-laws] mentally made her reach a point where she runs away from home with another man.”

The actor said Beena would have left Tabish a long time ago had she been educated, saying her helplessness was the chain keeping her in an abusive relationship.

“I would not judge Beena after what happened to her. That would be the worst thing,” Saeed said, when asked how she personally viewed the character’s decision to abandon her husband.

“What weapons have we given her to fight for herself? What weapons does she have? She has neither an education, nor any skills, nor time [for herself].”

Saeed said parents need to equip their daughters with education, skills, confidence. “Let them speak [up], and listen to what they have to say.”

This is crucial so women don’t have to make degrading choices when faced with a situation like Beena’s, she said.

She also had little patience for Tabish’s side of it, noting simply that “ungrateful people should not be indulged repeatedly.”

Asked whether she thinks Beena should go back to Tabish, the actor answered loud and clear: “No.”

She placed the question within a culture enabling gender-based violence, in which women who leave home and eventually return do so knowing they may be harmed.

“Girls leave their homes, they speak up and say that they are unhappy, that they have no respect or dignity,” she said. “Unless you (society) see a woman — it’s not just about beating her — until it becomes about someone sprinkling fuel on her and burning her, you won’t recognise the pain… You won’t recognise it as almost paralysing pain until someone shoots her.”

Of Beena specifically, Saeed asked: “The state of mind we see Beena in — how long do you think it will take her to come back to just recognising herself as who she is? Who is she? Even if she returns home, who is she?” She added: “Do you think Beena can come back to that? Ever?”

She said that while it was very difficult for any of the characters in Aap Ki Izzat to mend ways that had hardened over time, the only way forward for Tabish and Beena as a couple was to “work very hard and build a new relationship on new grounds.”

Whether that’s realistic is another question. Tabish, she suggested, “might have to stand upside down” to bring her home. Will he be able to invest the time it requires? she wondered.