In an ensemble drama crowded with established names, power struggles and inherited wounds, Usman Javed and Mehermaan Aileen Khan found the kind of screen connection an audience chooses for itself. As Zanjeerain crosses one billion cumulative views on YouTube, the actors reflect on two very different roads to recognition, the pairing that escaped the boundaries of the original story and why neither wants to repeat what has already worked.
The first look from this cover shoot is composed in a near-ceremonial hush. Dressed in ivory and antique gold, Usman Javed and Mehermaan Aileen Khan hold the camera’s gaze with the formal stillness of a wedding photograph. In another frame, that restraint gives way to marigolds, floral jewellery and molten orange. The setting is warmer and more playful, but their composure remains intact. Together, the images seem to place Torsam and Gul Meher inside the alternate universe their admirers have been imagining for them: away from the shadows of the haveli, yet still carrying the intensity that first made viewers look twice.
“I don’t want to mistake visibility for achievement or a breakout for having ‘arrived.’”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
Their appeal, however, was never simply about how convincing they looked together. It came from opposition. Torsam enters a scene as though he is prepared to fight it; Gul Meher appears to absorb the force before quietly redirecting it. His anger expands across the frame, while her restraint asks the audience to pay closer attention. Each makes the other more legible.
Zanjeerain arrived with the scale and marquee cast of a major television event. Sajal Aly, Ameer Gilani, Danyal Zafar, Ahsan Khan and Adnan Siddiqui were among the names inhabiting its world of loyalty, vengeance, family honour and sacrifice. Within an ensemble that large, no supporting relationship is guaranteed to dominate the conversation. Torsam and Gul Meher did something more interesting: they gradually became the story viewers searched for after an episode ended.
“The audience can discover you in a moment, but the craft still takes years to build.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
For Mehermaan, the evidence appeared on her own screen.
“I think I realised it when countless edits started popping up on my feed of Torsam and Gul Meher’s scenes where the contrast between them was the strongest,” she says. “Torsam was someone who constantly felt wounded, rejected or unwanted by the people around him, and then there was Gul Meher, who approached him with a completely different kind of care. She could see the wounded person beneath all that anger and, despite the way he pushed her away, she continued to want to understand and protect him.”
Fan edits can reveal something conventional ratings cannot. They show which glances are replayed, which pauses acquire a second life and which relationships viewers begin separating from the machinery of the plot. In this case, the fascination was rooted in a painful symmetry. Torsam, desperate to be chosen, could not recognise care when it arrived. Gul Meher offered him the acceptance he craved while being denied the love she wanted elsewhere.
“Torsam felt rejected by almost everyone, yet he was welcomed by the one person who genuinely wanted to care for him, while Gul Meher herself was being rejected by the one person she cared about the most,” Mehermaan explains. “I think the audience really connected with that emotional contrast.”
The relationship gathered greater weight once Gul Meher began trying to reveal the truth about Chacha Ji. Until then, her loyalty could have been mistaken for passive devotion. By placing herself at risk, she turned that loyalty into action. Her izhar-e-mohabbat intensified the public investment, but it was her willingness to confront the architecture surrounding Torsam that made the relationship consequential.
“Recognition is only the beginning. It doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the craft overnight.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
“She wasn’t simply standing beside him anymore,” Mehermaan says. “She was willing to put herself at risk to protect him, help him see what was really happening and ultimately take control of his own life. That’s when I felt people weren’t just watching two characters who happened to share scenes within a larger ensemble. They were emotionally invested in Torsam and Gul Meher as their own story.”
That investment is not uncomplicated. Torsam carries violence and considerable moral damage with him, and affection for a wounded man can easily blur into absolution if a story is careless. Yet understanding a character is not the same as pardoning him. Javed’s performance leaves room for the wound without allowing it to erase the harm. The audience may hope that Gul Meher’s care can reach him, but she cannot be made responsible for repairing everything he has broken. That tension, rather than a simple promise of romance, gives their scenes their charge.
Javed arrived at Torsam with an established familiarity with difficult men. A graduate of the National Academy of Performing Arts, his path has moved between theatre and television, with performances in Jhok Sarkar, Sultanat and Tan Man Neelo Neel preceding Zanjeerain. In Tan Man Neelo Neel, his portrayal of Kami placed him at the centre of a disturbing examination of entitlement, manufactured outrage and mob violence. Before that, Meeral in Jhok Sarkar had already shown how effectively he could inhabit a man shaped by power and impunity.
“Meeral, Kami and Torsam are definitely antagonist characters with their own backgrounds and distinct patterns,” Javed says. “I am grateful for those opportunities because they allowed me to explore a very complex emotional space, but yes, I would definitely like to break out of that lane.”
“I don’t want to be remembered for playing one character beautifully; I want to be trusted with many.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
This is one of acting’s less obvious hazards: portray menace convincingly and the industry may continue offering different versions of the same darkness. Typecasting can resemble praise while quietly narrowing an actor’s possibilities. Javed’s awareness of the pattern suggests that his next challenge is not to make another volatile man more layered, but to show audiences what his stillness, humour or tenderness might look like without danger waiting beneath it.
His theatre background also makes him particularly alert to the construction of a character’s complete emotional journey. On stage, that journey belongs to the uninterrupted performance. Television introduces another author: the edit. A significant Torsam moment may not have survived the final cut, but Javed does not believe its absence changed the fundamental character received by viewers.
“I believe the audience received the Torsam I performed,” he says. “The essence, emotions and journey of Torsam came through beautifully. I’m really happy that the audience connected with him the way I had imagined.”
“I’m incredibly grateful for how deeply people have loved Gul Meher, but I don’t want that love to limit me.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
If Javed entered Zanjeerain carrying years of preparation, Mehermaan arrived without a television résumé at all. Gul Meher was not simply her breakthrough role; she was her first. The confidence viewers eventually encountered had begun with an audition during which Mehermaan was not even certain how to interpret the reaction in the room.
“I was actually given scenes for two different characters,” she recalls. “I read one of them and performed the scene, and afterwards the people in the room looked at each other, then looked at me and started nodding. I remember being completely confused because it was my first time, genuinely having no idea what that reaction meant! They simply told me they would get back to me. By the time I reached home, I had a message saying I was locked in for Gul Meher.”
She had auditioned after wanting to act for years, trusting that the right opportunity would eventually find her. Even after being selected, she did not know the scale of Gul Meher’s journey. She had read a single scene rather than the complete script and had no carefully constructed interpretation to present. What emerged in the room was instinct.
“If Usman and I work together again, I’d definitely want to reinvent the dynamic rather than recreate Torsam and Gul Meher.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
“I was simply being myself,” she says. “Perhaps what they saw in me was the vulnerability, innocence, purity and a certain newness that they imagined for Gul Meher.”
That newness became part of the performance. Gul Meher’s softness does not appear rehearsed into perfection; it retains the uncertainty of someone still discovering the boundaries of her own courage. Mehermaan has spoken about how closely she absorbed the character’s emotional state and how difficult it could be to leave that softness behind once a scene ended. On screen, that sensitivity translates into watchfulness. Gul Meher does not need to dominate a scene to alter its temperature.
Yet Mehermaan’s apparently sudden arrival contained its own prolonged period of uncertainty. Nearly nine months passed between her selection and her return to the character. With no previous television experience to help her understand production timelines, she began to believe the opportunity had disappeared.
“I wouldn’t want to chase a particular pairing simply because audiences loved the last one. I’d want to chase the right story and the right creative challenge.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
“I remember thinking, how has it been months and nothing is moving forward? Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” she says. “So when I eventually did get to step into Gul Meher, it felt even more special. Something I had wished for for years had finally found its way to me, in a way and at a time I could never have planned myself.”
From the audience’s perspective, her ascent may resemble an overnight discovery. From hers, it is a story of private ambition, a fortuitous audition and nine months spent wondering whether the door had closed before she had properly walked through it.
This is where the two actors’ timelines become particularly revealing. Javed accumulated his craft through theatre, mentorship and a succession of screen characters. Mehermaan encountered broad recognition through her first television performance. One arrived prepared for visibility; the other found herself visible while still learning how to navigate it.
“What can look like confidence or ease on the outside is often the result of years of discipline and preparation that nobody sees.”
— Mehermaan Aileen Khan
“Watching Usman taught me that what can look like confidence or ease on the outside is often the result of years of discipline and preparation that nobody sees,” Mehermaan says. “He taught me patience, the value of trusting the process and that you can spend years preparing for the one moment when an opportunity finally arrives.”
Working opposite an experienced scene partner also gave her an education that could not have been acquired in isolation. Javed brought structure and control; Mehermaan brought the responsiveness of someone whose instincts had not yet hardened into habit. Their different levels of experience did not cancel one another out. They created the rhythm from which the pairing benefited.
“The audience can discover you in a moment, but the craft still takes years to build,” she says. “Being around someone experiencing the industry and the craft for the first time can also make you rediscover what that process feels like: the nervousness, the excitement, the questions and the willingness to try something without having years of habits attached to it.”
“I am grateful for those opportunities because they allowed me to explore a very complex emotional space, but I would definitely like to break out of that lane.”
— Usman Javed
The lesson extends beyond acting. Sudden recognition has its own seductive vocabulary: arrival, success, phenomenon. Mehermaan is careful not to confuse any of those words with completion.
“I don’t want to mistake visibility for achievement or a breakout for having ‘arrived,’” she says. “There isn’t one correct way to become an actor. You can spend years building yourself quietly, or you can suddenly find yourself being seen before you feel completely ready. But in both cases, recognition is only the beginning. It doesn’t mean you’ve mastered the craft overnight.”
If Zanjeerain has delivered visibility, its greater value may lie in the questions it has created for both actors. For Javed, the question is whether audiences are ready to see him without anger as his defining instrument. For Mehermaan, it is whether she can preserve the emotional openness that made Gul Meher convincing while refusing to become confined by it.
“An immediate yes would be a role that asks something of me that I haven’t given before,” she says. “It could be a very powerful, larger-than-life character, or even someone whose impact comes from something much quieter, but it has to be pivotal, demanding and emotionally or psychologically layered. I want to be challenged enough that I have to discover a new part of myself to play it.”
“The essence, emotions and journey of Torsam came through beautifully. I’m really happy that the audience connected with him the way I had imagined.”
— Usman Javed
She would turn down a character that required her to repeat an emotional vocabulary she had already explored. It is a decisive position for an actor at the beginning of her career, particularly when the industry’s instinct after a breakout is often to reproduce the same appeal until it loses its force.
“I’m incredibly grateful for how deeply people have loved Gul Meher, but I don’t want that love to limit me,” she says. “I want it to give me the freedom to take risks. I don’t want to be remembered for playing one character beautifully; I want to be trusted with many.”
The same principle applies to a future collaboration with Javed. Their off-screen clips have already encouraged viewers to imagine Torsam and Gul Meher in lighter, freer circumstances. The September cover gives that fantasy a sumptuous visual form, but neither nostalgia nor fan service would be reason enough to repeat the pairing.
“If Usman and I work together again, I’d definitely want to reinvent the dynamic rather than recreate Torsam and Gul Meher,” Mehermaan says. “We’ve developed a very natural professional rhythm and a trust that allows us to take risks with each other, so I’d love to put that into a completely different world and see what comes out of it.”
She is equally interested in finding new rhythms with actors she has never worked with before. “I wouldn’t want to chase a particular pairing simply because audiences loved the last one,” she adds. “I’d want to chase the right story and the right creative challenge.”
The cover photographs speak in the visual language of culmination: hands joined, flowers suspended overhead and two figures dressed as though a story has reached its grandest scene. In career terms, however, this is not a conclusion. It captures two actors at the precise moment their timelines converge. One has spent years earning the attention now coming his way; the other has discovered that a first role can place her before an audience of millions, but cannot complete the work on her behalf.
Torsam and Gul Meher emerged from Zanjeerain as a story within the story. Now Usman Javed and Mehermaan Aileen Khan are asking for something more difficult: the freedom to become stories of their own.
Interview: @sublimerantr
Hair & Makeup: @faizas.salon
Outfits: @mahawajahatofficial
Stylist: @stylebyhassan
Photography: @mahasphotographyofficial
Jewellery: @jewelexjewelry
Coordination: @hassanabdullahofficial