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Spontaneous celebrity Insta-live sessions are very capable of leading up to controversy, with celebrities making comments that can turn out to be offensive.

Quarantined in their homes, speaking into a cellphone camera rather than in a studio surrounded by people, the very famous tend to get candid. Actor Naumaan Ijaz recently did so and some of his comments raised eyebrows.

In a live session with screenwriter, actor and director Vasay Chaudhry, Naumaan grinned and declared that actor Humayun Saeed needed to learn how to act. “He is yet to learn it but I hope that he will learn.” Actor Adnan Siddiqui, according to him, was also in the same boat.

Read: Naumaan Ijaz hopes Humayun Saeed and Adnan Siddiqui learn to act soon

Video recordings from the live session promptly went viral with social media criticising Naumaan for making such high-handed comments about his co-actors. Others conjectured that he was probably joking because the session was just a candid talk between friends.

The next day, Naumaan came online in another live session – with designer Munib Nawaz – where he said that he had been joking and Instagrammers had randomly taken a single quote of his and put it out of context.

“These bloggers don’t have any business these days because actors generally pay them for their promotion. So they need to stir controversy just in order to run their ‘sasti dukaanein’ (small businesses),” he said.

But regardless of whether Naumaan was joking or not, his fellow actors have their reservations about his comments regarding them.

Actor Humayun Saeed observed, “If God has blessed you with izzat (respect), then you need to appreciate this and respect others. I have always been very respectful towards everyone and in return, I have received more respect and love than I could have ever hoped for."

"Whether Naumaan was laughing or was serious, he was right about one thing: I am still learning and I hope that I will continue learning. He, meanwhile, was very well-learned in the very first serial that he acted in and he still is the same in his latest projects. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to ever feel like I have learned everything, because if I do I will not be able to surprise people with new work.”

Adnan Siddiqui, similarly, commented, “We, as human beings, at times forget that we have an Almighty who is watching over us and blessing us. At times, we make fun of our fraternity members which I feel is uncalled for. I don’t think that I am a good actor but I am extremely thankful to Allah for blessing me with love and respect in abundance. And who are we to make fun of someone who has been blessed by Allah?”

“We don’t make fun of family members in public, we always do it in private. Similarly, when we as a fraternity criticise someone’s work we do it in private and not in public. People sometimes try to get away from what they have said by claiming that it was a joke but one can see through what the person really meant under the garb of a joke.”

Both Humayun Saeed and Adnan Siddiqui starred this year in a drama that broke records, Meray Paas Tum Ho, and won rave reviews for their performances. The comment – or even the joke - that they need to learn how to act was bound to rile their fans as well as the actors themselves.