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Everyone wants to judge a woman by her morals. That’s what Sania Saeed told the BBC when asked about her ongoing drama series Dar-e-Nijaat.

In a reel posted by BBC Urdu, Saeed, who plays the mother of the show’s ‘green flag’ male lead, said “writers, channels and audiences” all want to discuss morality when it comes to entertainment in Pakistan.

Elaborating on that, the actor said Pakistani society was still at a point where it wanted to talk about family issues, relationships and traditional gender roles.

She did, however, contend that maybe what’s shown in her drama isn’t the best way to go when it comes to dealing with trauma. “If you look at it psychologically, you don’t walk out of one trauma and into another, you shouldn’t,” she said.

Saeed said people should instead give themselves “time to heal”, but that in Pakistan it was a widely held belief that any problem between two people who were of a “marriageable age” was to get them married. She said this was something writer Umera Ahmed tried to address in the show.

For context, Dar-e-Nijaat’s female lead Zaryab (Durefishan Saleem) marries Saeed’s on-screen son Abu Bakar (Sheheryar Munawar) after her longtime boyfriend Zamil (Nameer Khan) marries another girl.

Saeed also took issue with audiences appreciating the mother-son relationship shown between her and Munawar in the show, saying, “Our women want sons who don’t ask questions, who comply. Parents want children who accept everything they say with their eyes closed.”

She said Abu Bakar seemed unreal to some viewers because he was supposed to be unreal. “He was raised in an unreal way by Khushbakht, in light of her learnings, which is not our usual pattern in parenting.”

On the flip side, she said, working with Munawar was “very fun” and scenes shot with him would fly by.