In an interview with Independent Urdu, Humayun Saeed opened up about playing Dr. Hasnat Khan in Season 5 of ‘The Crown’ and talked about the controversial kissing scenes between him and Elizabeth Debicki, which had been slammed by social media users in Pakistan on the double standards male and female actors are subjected to.
Saeed had played Dr Hasnat Khan, a Pakistani born British heart surgeon who had a romantic relationship with the late Lady Diana from 1995 to 1997, and was described by the Princess as “the love of her life.”
Addressing the controversy now, Saeed said that he didn’t face extreme public scrutiny like he had expected from Pakistanis:
“I am well aware that in our society such things aren’t acceptable for us, but my scene and the way we executed it was done in a tasteful manner. And there was not a lot of backlash from Pakistanis on that scene, because it wasn’t like the way they had thought.”
Previously, Saeed had revealed in the talk show ‘The Fourth Umpire’ that the kissing scene was not real, and it was staged to look like it was real.
Talking about how he took on the role of Hasnat, who is a private individual and has not publicly discussed his relationship with Diana, Saeed revealed:
“It was not necessary that I imitate his every single move. While we were shooting for ‘The Crown’, there were two or three options on how we should develop his character. We knew that he was very successful in his career, but in his relationship with Lady Diana he was very shy so we decided to capture that. Maybe in reality he wasn’t that shy in his relationship, but we decided to capture that.”
Listen to the complete interview here:
