I felt like I was a heroin addict: Mashal Khan opens up about how Lifafa Daayan affected her

UrduFlix — Pakistan's first local streaming OTT platform — is soon going to air Lifafa Dayan, a show based on journalists, anchorpersons and bribery behind closed doors, and we can't wait to see Mashal Khan doing justice to the lead role.

The trailer for the upcoming series invited both awe and criticism for its bold content. Khan sat down with BBC Urdu to reveal insight into her character and the parallel world she's diving into.

"People's personal views don't bother me much because overall people said okay, it's bold, it's daring but kudos to you guys having the guts to try to do something so different," she said, as she spoke about the abundance of negative comments directed her way after the trailer was released.

Joining her was Farhan Gohar, the producer of the show. He revealed that the name Lifafa Dayan reflects bribery and greed in its true form.

"When people take an envelope, they fall to any depths to justify that bribe and give reasons why they took that money. Be it misrepresentation, lying to someone, doing something wrong or even if that thing could kill someone."

Khan then spoke about how she came to do the role. "They told me about the character and I was extremely excited to do it. When Rao Riaz called me, and he is a brilliant director, I was so excited to work with him because I had seen some of his work before," she said excitedly.

"But when he told me about the character and the margin this character had for acting, I was like finally! Finally we have characters our actors can explore and showcase our talent via. So I was really excited."

Khan feels that people will feel sorry for her character, Alina Ali. "You feel bad about her, knowing she wasn't a bad human being, just someone caught in bad situations. The series is not about an over-ambitious woman, it's more about someone being led to that path, which is why in the end you don't feel like she did something wrong, but feel sorry that a woman has gone through this."

Khan also spoke about how she prepared for the role.

"I locked myself in my room for a few days, put myself in those shoes and wondered if this was me, if this was someone I really was in my life, what would my thought process be. What happened to me that I reached this point? What were my views? How lonely would I have been, what my social interactions would be — so I really isolated myself."

She said the role affected her mental health drastically and she opened up about the tough time she had. "I mentally got into the drama so much,that my crew even knows I would be shivering on set. I felt like I was a heroin addict.

"Essentially, this a patriarchal society, right? It is more difficult for women to climb up. And what I know of the news industry is that it's even more sexist. It's unfair on women. So women sometimes are pushed into these situations," she explained.

"It's not about that, oh, if a woman works she's going to be like this. No — we should create a society that protects women rather than pushing them towards measures that they would not otherwise have to take to get where they are."