Actor Zara Noor Abbas has opened up about her experience filming Gear Up, the action segment of the upcoming anthology film Sheroes, and revealed that she weighed 12kgs more when she shot the project than she does at present.
Speaking in an interview with Arab News, she discussed how her weight initially made her self-conscious about what she wore on screen. However, director Saqib Khan encouraged her to embrace her body, challenging her own perception of what an action heroine should look like.
“When I shot for that film, I was 12kgs higher than what I am right now. And I did feel that there was a certain inhibition to my body. I was really reluctant about what to wear,” the actor said.
Zara recalled raising her concerns with Khan, who reassured her that her physique was exactly what he wanted for the character.
“I was like, ‘No, Saqib, you don’t understand. This is not going to look good on my body.’ He was like, ‘No, you don’t understand. You look at your body in a very negative way. From where I am seeing, I think you are fit for the role, and I want someone who looks like this and who has a build like this,’” she added.
The conversation, she said, also reinforced the importance of representing different body types when portraying powerful female characters in action films. “Not everyone can be a size zero and look a certain size. No, women have different bodies, and we are telling different stories from different ethnicities,” she said.
Zara stars in Gear Up, one of three segments in the anthology film Shereos, which follows three women from three different worlds. She plays a police officer and takes on a series of action sequences, including high-speed car chases, a bomb-disposal sequence and a scene in which her character arrives at a police station on a motorbike.
The other segments feature Kinza Hashmi in Artist and Ushna Shah in Punch.
