Actor Sudhanshu Pandey, who’s seen having an extramarital affair in the show Anupamaa, has been receiving hate messages on his social media handles. “It is good to know that people hate my character so much, but getting messages like ‘I will chop you into pieces and give them to the dogs’ is too much. It plays on your mind,” he says, adding, “We Indians really drive high on emotions and that is why they, probably, hate me so much, which is a compliment to the actor in me. But the character that I play in the serial is the opposite of who I am in real life. Initially, I was unable to say all those mean dialogues to Rupali (Ganguly), who plays my wife in the serial. Since these things were constantly on my mind, I was toying with the idea of releasing a video online to tell people that I am not like this in real life.”

On the personal front, Sudhanshu has been married for more than two decades now. “Just like every husband, I am scared of my wife, too. I am not like my character Vanraj, who doesn’t fear his wife. In fact, even my wife Mona has told me twice that she hates me because of what I do with my wife on screen, so you can imagine how much hatred I have received from people around me!” he signs off.