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Dananeer Mobeen believes fans shipping her and her co-stars might make her future partner a little uncomfortable. She appeared in an interview with Something Haute where she talked about this, her experiences growing up as a celebrity and the worries her parents had about her work.

“Whoever I will be with in the future, I also don’t want them to get uncomfortable because of all of this… things circulating, going around,” the actor said.

Aside from future concerns, she said such things affected her family life in the present too. “It does make me uncomfortable, because my family starts getting affected quite a lot. They ask me, ‘Beta, why are they saying this?’ My parents are simple people.”

Mobeen did clarify that this had less to do with her work and more with what people were saying, adding that her parents enjoyed watching her latest romantic drama, Meem se Mohabbat, with Ahad Raza Mir.

The actor said they had always been ‘scared’ about her line of work and the perception of the media industry for people on the outside looking in was “skewed”, calling it a “harsh reality”. She said her family had no ties to the media at all before she joined the field and that made her parents fear for her from the beginning.

Mobeen said she understands their concerns more as she grows older, becoming protective of girls who have entered the industry after her. “If I am feeling this at my age, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my parents, sending me into the industry from the bubble they had built.”

Her co-stars, however, were cooperative and supportive, so rumours on the internet never made things awkward on set. She said some even approached the issue with banter and light-hearted humour, so it’s never a problem for her professionally.

She said she had grown up a lot in the last five years and that she would be “unrecognisable” to her younger self. She also faced a lot of “scrutiny” from the public during this time, which she said affected her to some degree. “I have no shame in admitting that… I am not made of metal,” she said.

That scrutiny reared its head recently when the actor was in London to promote her film Mera Lyari and posted a picture of herself wearing skin-tone leggings — earning the ire of fans.

Mobeen said that particular incident didn’t hit her too hard because it was just so ridiculous. She said she was “dying from the cold” and wore tights to keep warm. “What’s the big deal, why is this in headlines?” she asked.

She also questioned society’s obsession with policing women’s morals. “Men have shirtless photoshoots, nobody bats an eye, but they dragged me over fleece leggings like I’d committed some grave sin. I just don’t understand why this is treated like an issue of ‘respect’.”

Undeterred and always willing to make a fashion statement, the actor wore a special top for the interview, with a deep meaning behind it.

Made using recycled cigarette butts from the set of Mera Lyari, she explained she had the jersey especially made because she felt like she had to send a message after being part of a project where smoking was shown on screen.

Mobeen joked that everyone on set thought it was so weird when she’d go around picking up their trash, but it turned out really well.