Maira Khan says she felt like a lab rat in Tamasha Ghar

Reality shows are meant to make a show out of real life, but there’s always some directing going on when there are cameras around. Maira Khan, an actor who was a contestant on Tamasha Ghar, told the audience what was going on behind the scenes because she was there.

Ali Gul Pir, a singer and content creator, shared a podcast clip with Khan on Tuesday. Khan was a guest on the podcast. During the podcast, she talked about how the production team, the “politics” of the show, and the strict rules they had to follow, like staying up for 12 hours straight and being watched 24/7, made her feel like she was being used. Pir wrote in the post’s caption, “Maira Khan has been acting since she was four years old, and she just got out of a 40-day lockup with 14 other people for a reality TV show called Tamasha.”

The Main Hari Piya actor was chosen just two days before the show was to be filmed, and she told the “Waderai Ka Beta” singer that her mother was against it. She asked her to change her mind because she had seen Bigg Boss and Big Brother and knew how hard and awkward it can be. “When I got there, I found out what a tamasha it can be,” Khan added.

The actress from Cheekh explained why she went from being calm and cool to being angry. Her migraine was bothering her, and she didn’t have TV or the internet to keep her mind off things. This made her feel “mentally disturbed,” and then she “exploded.”

“We could not sleep, Ali. If we dozed off, the siren would go off. So you had to be up for 12 hours. You couldn’t lay down or close your eyes,” she said. Elaborating on the extreme nature of being a reality show contestant, she talked about being recorded even in the 12 hours allotted for rest. “We thought it was off time but they played it in [the] uncut [version]. We found out about this three weeks later that the nonsense we spewed after the lights are dimmed was actually being aired to the world. It’s available on YouTube, we’re strolling in our pyjamas, doing this and that, and everything is there. So privacy was slightly [an issue].”

It was to the point that Adnan Siddiqui, the host and judge, wanted even their restroom breaks documented. “Mics were only absent from the toilet and Adnan said, ‘It’s okay, we can set them up there as well. It’s only us who would be listening to the sounds, we should know what they’re talking about’,” she said.

“They used to listen to everything we talked about. We all noted that if, for example, me and you are sitting and talking about something, they will take something out of that and make a game of it. Our emotions, our moods, the way we live our lives in there, they would design games according to that,” said Khan, adding that none of it was scripted. “At certain points Aadi [Adeal Amjad] and I, particularly myself, I would feel like a lab rat because each person was monitored by teams of twos or threes. They would monitor your mood, your anger, everything about you. This is a part of reality shows, they manipulate your mind. In there we would get a task and out there our teams would get a task that today these two people need to fight or this needs to happen.”

The show began airing on August 20 on ARY Digital. The contestants also include actors Aamna Malick, Umer Aalam, Humaira Asghar, Mareeha Safdar, Saeeda Imtiaz, Saim Ali, singer Nouman Javaid, comedian Rauf Lala, choreographer Nigah Jee, model Faiza Khan and fitness trainer Sehr Beg as contestants.

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