Actor Mohammed Ahmed controversy: Tarar steps in, proposes mentorship council

WEB DESK: Federal Information Minister Attaullah Tarar has weighed in on the controversy surrounding veteran actor Mohammed Ahmed, calling the treatment meted out to him on the set of a drama serial “not only condemnable but highly deplorable.”

In a post on X, Tarar proposed setting up a mentorship programme for young TV artists, to be headed by senior actors such as Ahmed, or alternatively forming a council along similar lines. He said he would call a meeting of TV artists to gather suggestions on the proposal.

Actor Fahad Sheikh has pushed back against accusations that he disrespected Ahmed, after a video of the two on set went viral this week. The clip, widely circulated on social media, shows Sheikh and other cast members laughing as Ahmed is filmed with a small handheld fan pointed at his hair. It surfaced shortly after Ahmed spoke publicly about being mocked by a much younger co-star on set.

Speaking on Sheeba Khan’s Dareecha podcast, Ahmed described being ridiculed in the green room by an actor roughly four decades his junior. He said the actor, the lead of the show, raised his voice in front of others and remarked that he had once evaluated Ahmed’s acting ability early in their working relationship before deeming him competent enough for a role.

Ahmed also described an on-set incident in which the actor grabbed a portable fan from a colleague and held it up to his hair as if drying it, announcing loudly to the set that he was styling him. He said he chose not to react at the time, given how easily such moments can be filmed and shared without context, and noted that the footage now circulating matched what he had described in the interview.

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Several industry figures, including Faysal Quraishi and Shamoon Abbasi, publicly backed Ahmed and pressed the unnamed actor to identify himself and apologise.

Sheikh addressed the controversy on Wednesday evening through a series of Instagram stories, arguing that partial narratives can be misleading and describing the set environment as a close-knit one where cast members joke, eat and share concerns together. He said he had worked with Ahmed on multiple projects over the years and that their rapport had always involved friendly banter, adding that he was unaware his own joke had been perceived as bullying since that was never the intention.

He said colleagues he had worked with over his eleven-year career had treated him with the same warmth as family, and maintained that he had personally apologised to Ahmed well before the video drew public attention. He said he had no issue repeating that apology publicly, given Ahmed’s seniority, and extended a further public apology in case his earlier one had not been sufficient, saying he would never intend to disrespect someone senior to him. He added that he was pursuing legal action against those who had shared an edited version of the footage in order to mislead the public.

The video also drew criticism from actor Nadia Jamil, who said she found the behaviour shown in it disturbing. She said there were limits to how younger people should address their elders even in a joking manner, and that such boundaries were meant to be instilled from childhood, adding that the actor had clearly overstepped them. She said Ahmed’s discomfort in the clip was evident, and criticised whoever posted the video for adding to his embarrassment rather than sparing him from it.