Clad in a smart black button-down shirt with his newly minted wedding band glinting on his left hand, actor Sheheryar Munawar sat down for an intimate chat with Ahmad Ali Butt on the latter’s podcast earlier this week.
Having remained relatively tight-lipped about his personal life so far — particularly with regards to his wife, Maheen Siddiqui — the Radd actor gave fans what they have been clamouring for ever since those wedding photos hit social media last December: the story of how he and Maheen came to be.
Love and marriage
“She is a wonderful person who manages to sort of handle me, and I think that’s quite a big task,” began an enamoured Sheheryar.
Part of this ‘handling’ entails correcting Sheheryar’s self-confessed casual attitude to time management (“I’m late for everything, and poor Maheen is trying to fix that”) and also being his biggest rock — as he is hers. “I love that we’re both cheerleaders for each other,” added Sheheryar. “When she does something, I always support her, and vice versa.”
Sheheryar revealed that it was an ordinary Sunday morning when the now-couple had first agreed to meet for coffee, having already known each other vaguely “for three or four years” after having been introduced on a social occasion through mutual friend and director Asim Raza. What was meant to be a coffee melted into a whole day in each other’s company, culminating in dinner.
“If I had slept in that day, I’d have never got married,” recalled Sheheryar. “We were
just supposed to have coffee but we kept talking and talking and we hung out for like, seven or eight hours that day. And then I said, ‘I’ll have to get you dinner now!'”
The rest, as they say, is history. It was not long after that coffee-cum-dinner that Sheheryar said he knew Maheen was the one for him. He introduced her to his parents within a month, a decision that at first “freaked her out”, although, fortunately for Sheheryar, did not last, as he now declared, “If I had to get married, it had to be to Maheen and no one else,”
From business to acting
As fans are aware, Sheheryar has not just been lucky in love, but has also enjoyed a sun-kissed career in the entertainment industry, thanks in no small part to his showbiz aunt, Sultana Siddiqui, who introduced him to the world of television sets from a young age. Taken in by all this glamour, Sheheryar recalled being allowed at his aunt’s place of work and receiving signed photographs from big actors of the day – actors that, even back then, according to him, included stalwarts Humayun Saeed and Adnan Siddiqui.
“I still have a set of photos signed by Humayun and Adnan from when I was in the fourth grade,” he remembered fondly. “I was always connected to [showbiz] somehow.”
Dismissing comments that he himself resembles Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan (“Being likened to another actor dampens your identity”), Sheheryar shared that, like others in his generation, he at first opted for the seemingly sensible path of studying business. Despite appearing in television commercials during university, he began work at a multinational company, on course for leaving the country after having progressed in his career.
“Things were going very well – until I had an offer to do a small role in Karachi,” revealed the actor. “That whole world fascinated me again. I decided I wanted to get behind the camera and learn this.”
By ‘this’, Sheheryar meant wanting to be a director, and in his view, the path to learning how to do that was to become an actor first – a decision that initially worried his parents. Eventually, however, they came to accept their son’s change of heart.
“My dad sat me down and told me I had to understand the financial risk I was taking by entering the entertainment industry, but that I had his support,” said Sheheryar. “He had been in the air force, and I guess he was living vicariously through me!”
Sheheryar took pains to stress, however, that courting the camera is no mean feat. “This is the scariest job you can do,” he noted. “Nothing is fixed. Money is secondary. If you have a bad day at work, your boss will yell at you, you go back home, your wife will take care of you, and it will be over. But here if you have a bad day at work, the whole world will know. You give people licence to talk about you, and that is a big deal.”
Mahira and romcoms
Like others in the world of showbiz, the actor has nothing but fondness for Pakistan’s national heroine: Mahira Khan. Having known Mahira since 2013 and worked with her on hit film Parey Hut Love, Sheheryar basked in the glow of Mahira’s aura of positivity.
“She’s a great human being,” he said warmly. “She is so positive about everything, so you are never afraid of asking her anything. I’m very lucky to have found a dear friend in her. She’s always been very supportive.”
As for what he will and will not do going forward there is one thing Sheheryar is keen to avoid, despite an earlier declaration of “never say never”.
“If I had to produce another film, I’d get out of the romcom genre,” he expressed. “I want to work on a high concept idea – or work on a drama. I’m not talking about something like Interstellar of course! But something in action, maybe, and with no more than two songs!”
At the end of the day, however, Sheheryar has exactly zero regrets about the career change he made all those years ago. “I love being in the industry,” he said with a tone of finality. “I have never had a day where I have woken up and thought I made the wrong decision switching careers. The high you get after many months — and every actor gets it — that moment is enough to justify it all.”
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