KARACHI: Pakistani actor Zara Noor Abbas says playing a bomb-disposal officer in the upcoming anthology film “Sheroes” allowed her to display a form of female physical strength rarely afforded to women in local television dramas.

The film tells three stories centered on women in unconventional roles: Abbas plays a police officer who defuses explosives, Ushna Shah portrays a boxer and Kinza Hashmi appears as an artist. It is scheduled for theatrical release across Pakistan on Oct. 2.

Produced through Sindh Films, a filmmaking initiative run by the provincial government, in collaboration with Geo Films, “Sheroes” shows Abbas arriving at a police station on a motorcycle, carrying a firearm and handling explosives as a member of a bomb-disposal unit.

“In dramas, we are not able to show our physical strength,” Abbas told Arab News in an interview on Thursday. “As characters, we do show the emotional resilience and the persistence and the perseverance that women have but I really wanted to project a role where I could look badass.”

Abbas, one of Pakistan’s most recognizable television actors, said the role offered a departure from the emotionally driven characters for which she is best known and had intensified her interest in action projects.

“I think [I’d like to take up roles around] the spyverse or the cool cop verse,” she said. “I really like that.”

Although the filming of “Sheroes” has ended, Abbas said she was now training for another role for five hours each morning before reporting to a television set.

“I am also doing MMA right now and I am learning street fighting,” she said, referring to mixed martial arts.

The physicality of “Sheroes” also forced Abbas to confront her own anxieties about appearing on screen. She said she weighed 12 kg more while filming and initially resisted some of the costumes selected for her character.

“I did feel that there was a certain inhibition to my body. I was really reluctant on what to wear.”

Abbas recalled telling director Saqib Khan that the clothes would not look good on her. His response, she said, helped change how she viewed herself.

“He was like, ‘No, you don’t understand. You look at your body in a very negative way and in a very negative dimension. From where I am seeing, I think you are fit for the role and I want someone who looks like this and has a build like this.’”

Abbas said confidence was not determined by whether someone had what society considered a masculine or feminine physique.

“When there is confidence, confidence doesn’t know if I am in a masculine body or in a feminine body,” she said.

She argued that audiences and filmmakers were gradually moving beyond narrow expectations about how women should look on screen.

“I think that’s the point everybody needs to understand,” Abbas said. “Everybody cannot be a size zero and look a certain size. No.”

“Women have different bodies and we are telling different stories from different ethnicities,” she added. “Well, this is how we are!”

Abbas said attitudes toward married actors and working mothers were also changing behind the camera, with producers increasingly accommodating childcare and family responsibilities.

“The producers are becoming very very understanding of this idea that if she is a woman, she is a married woman and if she is a mother she needs that kind of space,” she said. “Even the co-actors are very amazing and they understand that. The directors understand that.”

“Gone are the days of the industry that if you are single only then you are gonna prosper. Or if you don’t have a baby only then things are going to be easy.”

Abbas gave birth to her daughter more than two years ago and is married to fellow actor Asad Siddiqui, who also makes an appearance in “Sheroes.” She credited him with making it possible for her to balance motherhood with an acting career.

“When I am not home, he is,” she said. “And the kind of upbringing he is giving my daughter, our daughter, and how he is telling her that , ‘Amma is not available. Amma is not home because she is busy at work’.”