Prominent Egyptian actress Nabila Obeid expressed her anger towards her colleague Egyptian actor Husseing Fahmi's statements that she intentionally posted her name ahead of his in their joint film “Qasaqees Warak”, and that she deliberately posted his name in a way that does not suit his long history. Fahmi also blamed Nabila for the failure of the movie saying that her selfishness and conceit eventually led to it.
Nabila defended herself by saying that she is not responsible in any way for the failure of the movie and that she was not the one who made the advertisements for the film. She asserted that the designers were a group of young people who were not aware of the artistic history of the characters in the movie. Nabila added that Hussein should have contacted her to get an explanation rather than accusing her publicly through the media.
Nabila revealed that she was mourning the death of her mother at the time when the advertisements were being made and that Hussein should have followed up with the Design Company instead of grumbling now about it, or at least stop the ads and ask for a new design.
Regarding the other accusation, that Nabila was behind the failure of the movie, she disclosed that the main problem was the bad timing because the movie was screened at the same time when high school exams were on. Besides the new produces [Subhi Imam and co.] did not give the movie the sufficient advertising campaign.
Nabila stressed that she will not participate in any other work with Hussein after he displayed such a bad attitude towards her. She noted that it is unprofessional of him to keep accusing her in such a way.
Obeid experienced a severe case of depression over the failure of the film “Qasaqees Al Ushaq” (Tales of Lovers), and the very low profit it made, leading to its removal from all cinema houses for the fact that hardly anyone was going to see it.
The first shock was during the private screening of the film before its official release in which the writer and all the actors starring in the film, especially Hussein did not attend, and only Nabila was present and made the instance appear as normal as possible. The film had only made 12 thousand Egyptian pounds in its first week of screening despite the huge advertising campaign Nabila made trying to defend her reasons for continuing in her career as a notable actress and film producer.
According to the Saudi based daily, Al Watan, the writer of the film had requested that his name be removed from all the advertised posters for the film. He had stressed that he had originally wrote a script for a film that was to last 110 minutes but was surprised to find out that a large portion was deleted and only 75 minutes had remained. Hussein had also surprised everyone with the same request of removing his name from all the posters and ads for the film. Hussein revealed that the film has experienced this kind of failure due to the insistency of Nabila to alter the script and scenes and demanding that her name be placed above everyone elses, resulting in an incomplete story and film.
Nabila had thought that this film would be the ultimate test for her and her cinematic career will depend on it, hoping to enter the summer competition of films and praying that her audience would not let her down. She had also hoped that the hot and intimate scenes written by Waheed Hamid and daringly directed by Said Marzouq would surely help her succeed. -Albawaba.com
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
