Mahira Khan made her big Bollywood debut in Raees alongside Shah Rukh Khan and is now set to make a comeback to the Indian screens. The Zaalima will feature in the opening episode of Yaar Julahay, a Zee Theatre series of dramatic readings that pays tribute to celebrated writers of the subcontinent.

While this sounds like a new beginning and a fresh take to build relations between the two countries, in an interview with Indian critic Anupama Chopra on Film Companion, she told that she was offered web series that would stream on Indian digital platforms but let go of them because she was ‘scared’.

“A lot of the other series were offered to me and at that time… I don’t know if anybody will understand when I say this, I was scared. I was genuinely just scared. It wasn’t about what people say, I was just like, ‘I don’t know if I want to go there.’ And there was some content which was amazing, and I didn’t want to miss out on it,” said the actor who will narrate one of the short stories in the upcoming Zee5 series.

Read More: Mahira Khan returns to Indian screens with Yaar Julahay

Mahira shared that she had experienced the ban first-hand and felt a great opportunity for collaboration between artists from the two countries had been lost.

“I guess having experienced it first hand, I think I look at it in a very, it’s just sad when I think about it. We’ve all moved on, we’re all doing.. you know that’s what we do. We don’t have this, we do something else. It’s what happens. But I feel like a great great opportunity for the entire subcontinent to come together and collaborate was lost. I think it might happen again, who knows,” she said.

The actor confessed that she was scared and has no shame in admitting it. “Now I am a bit more like, ‘No, come on yaar, you can’t let something that happened, which was political, affect your choices.’ So I don’t think I will do that anymore and I hope that we collaborate, even if it’s on digital or in any way,” the Humsafar star added.