It’s impossible to ignore Verna, Mahira Khan’s upcoming film opposite newcomer Haroon Shahid.
In the past week, they’ve been all over the place, promoting the film with a frenzy in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. They showed up at shopping malls and interacted with their fans, sold tickets at cinemas, guest starred on TV and radio programmes, toured educational institutions, and attended public events such as the Masala Family Festival, The Mix and, most recently, the PSL Draft ceremony, where they were joined by the film’s ‘bad boy’ Zarrar Khan.
Khan and Shahid also made a surprising in-flight appearance for PIA, much to the delight of the passengers who Khan gracefully obliged with selfies and shout-outs. Of course, the stars also squeezed in meet-and-greet sessions with the media, and made time for photo ops.
In an interview to BBC World, Khan talked about harassment and intimidation, the main topics touched in the film, and also spoke out, perhaps for the first time, on the controversy surrounding her photos with Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor.
“You don’t feel good about being criticised, especially when you’ve been loved so much,” she said. “But what it did make me understand is that, I get it, someone did encroach on my privacy, which wasn’t correct. But then again, I’m a public personality. Where there’s so much love, you know, there will be trolls, there will be people who will say things.”
In the end, she asserted that “it doesn’t matter how I conduct myself or what I wear or how I speak or where I sit or what I do; that does not allow anybody to harass me.”
Verna releases in cinemas across the UAE on November 23.
