Sarwat Gillani Took Inspiration from Meryl Streep for Churails’ Character
The recently released Zee5 series Churails, featuring Pakistani actors and director Asim Abbasi, is garnering quite a lot of praise on both sides of the border. One of it’s leading actors Sarwat Gillani recently spoke to Indian Express over the phone and spilled some beans over her character Sarah.
“In TV and films, you have to emote a lot for the audience to feel the pain or happiness but for the web it had to be altered to zero. I had to unlearn and start new,” said Sarwat who plays a lawyer turned vigilante in the series.
“In The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep doesn’t say much but her aura is so powerful. I even got inspired by Angelina’s [Jolie] film Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I wanted to take that subtleness,” she continued, “Basically, I adapted the subtleness of these strong personalities in my character.”
Talking about Churails, Sarwat said that director Asim Abbasi wanted to break the stereotypes surrounding how women should be portrayed in the media. The stories, Sarwat said, that really often have to be sugarcoated to make them acceptable to the audience, but in fail to portray all sorts of women this world has.
Read More : Churails Director’s Thoughts on Women-oriented Subjects as Male Film-maker
“[Asim] wanted to break the stereotype that a woman who steps out of the house is bad and the one who stays home and takes care of the house in good,” said Sarwat of the reality-based stereotype endorsed in the media.
“The stories are fictional. There is not much reality attached to it, although we see some stories in the news every day. Like a guy throwing acid on a woman because she refused to marry him. But we don’t want to talk about it in the entertainment sector, we want to sugarcoat the story. Asim wanted to break this,” added the Jawani Phir Nahi Ani actress.
“In Churails we didn’t need a man to rescue a woman, we wanted to show that a woman can stand for herself and uplift other women going through problems,” Sarwat said of the series that also stars Yasra Rizvi, Nimra Bucha and Meharbano in lead roles.
