Mumbai, Jul 8 (IANS): Actor Emraan Hashmi opened up about the harsh realities of social media, acknowledging that trolling is a reality and advising people to take it with a bit of salt and not too seriously.

Emraan, who plays the role of Raghu Khanna in the web series 'Showtime', shared: "I think there are two schools of thought, some actors want to put everything up in the public domain, to make their lives seem interesting, and some actors like to keep a certain compartmentalised way of viewing things, and they like their private lives to be private, and I come from that school of thought. However, none of them is right or wrong."

Emraan feels that while social media can sometimes be intrusive, he doesn't see it as a big issue.

"I've never had a situation where things have become intrusive, it never reached that point. I think even the press has been extremely courteous. Through the 20 years of my career, I've never had a fact of that nature where they've been very intrusive about my privacy. But I'm sure some actors have had that, and as far as trolling goes, thankfully I have not been trolled to that point, but you have one of the instances when, first of all, I do check comments sometimes, but I'm not insistently on social media checking who's saying what about me," he said.

Emraan added: "But yes, trolling is a reality. I think it's just people who probably like criticising and they have some bone to pick with the world, and sometimes they're having something bad happen in their own life. And that echoes in what they say about actors, and we become a soft target. So I think you have to take it with a bit of salt and not take it too seriously."

Created by Sumit Roy, with Mihir Desai as the showrunner, and directed by Mihir Desai and Archit Kumar, 'Showtime' features Emraan Hashmi, Mahima Makwana, Mouni Roy, Rajeev Khandelwal, Shriya Saran, Vishal Vashishtha, Neeraj Madhav, and Vijay Raaz.

All episodes of 'Showtime' are set to stream from July 12 on Disney+ Hotstar.