PremiumAsim Abbasi on reuniting Fawad Khan-Sanam Saeed after Zindagi Gulzar Hai for Barzakh - ‘They were hungry to do something different’
Barzakh is set to release on Zee5 on July 19, 2024 and stars Fawad Khan with Sanam Saeed in the lead.
Last Updated: 09.31 AM, Jun 26, 2024
That Asim Abbasi is all set to return to the series format with a six-episode original show written and directed by him is news we have already given you. There is a trailer dropping on July 1. But we cannot get over the fact that he has probably pulled off a once-in-a-lifetime casting with his show called Barzakh and is set to reunite the popular duo of Zindagi Gulzar Hai, Fawad Khan, and Sanam Saeed. The announcement of their reunion a long time ago had the world in a happy shock, and the fandom was taken by storm. The wait was long, but now it has finally ended, and we are about to witness their getting together on a show. Abbasi has now spoken about his motivation to bring them together.
About Barzakh
Barzakh, for the uninitiated, is a Zee5 show that is about an old man who has invited his estranged children and grandchildren to his wedding in a picturesque valley resort that he owns. However, he is getting married to the ghost of his first lover. Anyone who has seen even a single episode of Zindagi Gulzar Hai knows that these two shows are poles apart. In the latest conversation, Asim Abbasi, the writer and director of Barzakh, was asked why he chose Fawad Khan and Sanam Saeed. Read on to learn what the filmmaker had to say about it.
Asim Abbasi on Casting
Talking to the Indian Express, Asim Abbasi revealed how he doesn't write scripts with actors in mind, but Sanam was someone he had reached out to earlier. The filmmaker revealed how he wished she was in Churails too. “Sanam has this stoicism, but beauty and empathy in her eyes are what her character here needed. So, once I had done the writing process and was thinking about casting, she was my top choice,” he said.
Barzakh director Asim Abbasi added, “Fawad, I had honestly not thought of him originally because I thought this is an ensemble piece and all these characters have the same weightage and maybe Fawad is looking for a hero-driven role, as some actors might be. I said this to him after he came on board. He was like, ‘Have you not seen the type of work… Have you not seen Kapoor and Sons? Why did I choose it? For the character!’”
“They were just really eager to do it. As an outsider, we put this weight on how they are going to react and what they will want to do. Fawad just loved the story and wanted to be a part of the ensemble, and there was not this thing of, ‘Iska role zyada hai, meri ending kya hai.’ It wasn’t planned from my side that this is a casting coup, bringing these two together after a long time. They were well-suited and hungry to do something that was different. It is serendipity that they have come together to play such vastly different characters,” Asim Abbasi concluded.
Barzakh is set to release on Zee5 on July 19, 2024, and you can watch it with your OTTplay Premium subscription too.
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