Double the star power! Mahira, Fahad talk how fate united them together onscreen

And then came the new stars and the privatised industry. We saw the likes of Ahad Raza Mir and Sajal Aly, Mehwish Hayat, and Humayun Saeed turning out to be one of the most bankable combinations. However, as luck would have it, there was one pair we never saw together but deep down rallied for.

Mahira Khan first expressed her wish to work with Fahad Mustafa back in 2018. The actors had then come together onscreen for the first time in Mustafa’s game show and the obvious chemistry was too grand to ignore and so everyone said Zindabad! Filmmakers Nabeel Qureshi and Fizza Ali Meerza have finally brought Khan and Mustafa together in Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad.

Stars aligned

“I really don’t know what took us so long to come together and work,” Khan tells The Express Tribune. “We should have worked together on a project by now. I was very close to working with him a few years ago. But we just didn’t. I think with Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad, our stars aligned. You know when everything just goes effortlessly and there are no hurdles, you know then that it’s meant to be.”

When Khan appeared with Mustafa in Jeeto Pakistan, the audience truly received a glimpse of the duo sharing the screen. “When I was coming back from Jeeto, I saw that I was trending on Twitter,” Khan recalls while Mustafa interjects, “Well, because you’re Mahira Khan!” The Verna star laughs and adds, “No! I think it was because that was the first time people saw us together. We were naturally in sync; we were having fun. People loved that episode and went crazy. That’s when it happened.”

Mustafa chimes in and adds, “And we aren’t friends – well, we weren’t friends at that point. It just happened organically.”

Getting into the character

“I play this vet in the film, so I handle all kinds of animals – no, wait! I play an animal rights activist,” Khan remarks. “I feel very strongly for animals – all kinds of animals,” she quips as she looks over to Mustafa. The latter retorts, “Well, a human being is a social animal.” Adding on, the Raees star shares, “So, she meets this cop who finally realises what Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad truly means. What he stands for, what he always stood for. It’s his story and his journey of finding that and I am just supporting him.”

The Actor-in-Law star, while divulging his character, says, “I always wanted to do a film which was one of its kind, at least in this region. We haven’t really made films on cops. If you have ever come across a cop story, Inspector Jamshed was a character I was always fond of and I wanted to play a cop-like character which had similar traits to him.”

He adds, “I had developed and worked one story myself. At the same time, Nabeel came to me and narrated to me the story of Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad which was pretty similar. The thing is Nabeel and I think alike. Maybe that’s why we work a lot together. I always think an actor can play different characters but it’s very important to understand the context. To grow a beard, to have a moustache, have an accent – all this can do wonders only if you have a strong storyline to justify it. I always look for a story and this was it.”

‘Budget wisely spent’

In the three-minute-long trailer of the film, we see Mustafa doing stunts we have never seen in a Pakistani film before. The audience gets to see VFX effects, decent cinematography, and an airplane! Mustafa decodes how the makers decided to spend the money on what seems to be a highly budgeted film. “It’s not a big-budget film, it’s a film with a budget wisely spent,” the actor responds. “But if it reflects in the trailer that way, then I think we have done a good job with it. Since I am a producer as well, I don’t believe in spending money mindlessly. There must be a logic behind it.”

He adds, “With several promising films releasing, we understand that the anticipation is there. It’s rightly done, it’s correctly done – the film is precise, it’s not overly ambitious. The film is coming out after two years of its initial release date, so yeah; the nervousness is there. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We can only make films that we think are good and then it’s up to the audience. If they do come to the cinemas to watch it and they like the film, then that’s great.”

Mustafa then remarks that he isn’t expecting crazy numbers at the box office with another three big films hitting the theatres at the same time, but he hopes the business Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad mints is decent. “Someone will have to take a hit. There were a few recently released films that didn’t work. Maybe they weren’t good enough, people didn’t go and watch it. But few of them were really good films. I hate this term – revival of the cinema. But again, for us, that is the case. You just can’t shy away from it.”