Unfortunately, due to the ban on Pakistani artists and all the controversy in the country, SRK went to meet Raj Thackeray to assure him that Mahira wouldn’t promote the film in the country and that he would avoid working with Pakistani talent in the future. Unfair, especially to the woman who would’ve really been looking forward to it – but how much can you really blame the Raees team?
Mahira sat down with Pakistani newspaper Dawn to talk about the entire situation, and she said that she wanted the “Introducing Mahira Khan” tag in a film ever since she was a child – but it didn’t happen for her first film in Pakistan, and it’s unclear whether it’ll happen here. When told to put it into perspective – and that “normal” people would instead be thinking she has a charmed life – Mahira hit back by saying:
That’s what my mother also says! And my friends! But I can’t just move on. It’s my work. Yes I’m grateful, but it’s something I have worked for! Why shouldn’t I feel it? Just because I’m an actor? Just because it’s a film? Just because it seems like fluff? I also want to promote the film. I also want to be in an interview with Shah Rukh Khan talking about it. Why not? Why is it I get told that that’s asking for too much? It isn’t! It is my right. This was also my film.
She even said that six months ago she was “getting a new script every day” but now, Pakistani producers are saying that there’s “no scope” and they should “go back to dramas”.
As for the film not releasing in Pakistan, she told the paper:
I want my country to see this. I want everybody to see it, every person in the world. My friends keep saying you did it, it’s enough, you can just keep it in a box somewhere…I do that, but there’s a part of me that says, no, I want everybody to see my blood sweat and tears for these two years, because it’s been tough and I want people to see it even if I fail at it.
Read the full interview here.