Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter talk love, egos and trolling in Netflix’s The Royals

The Royals

In the upcoming romantic comedy series The Royals on Netflix, Ishaan Khatter and Bhumi Pednekar will appear together on screen for the first time. After the release of the trailer, their pairing—which was first greeted with surprise and laughter when the cast was revealed—has attracted a lot of attention.

Audiences have begun praising their on-screen chemistry, a dynamic that seems to have evolved naturally. “It was the same graph for us,” Ishaan says with a laugh, reflecting on how their journey mirrored audience reactions.

In an exclusive conversation with Hindustan Times, the two actors opened up about the process of building their rapport and bringing their characters to life. Bhumi shared that they took part in chemistry readings to establish a connection before filming began. “We went through a chemistry read. We had never worked together. We didn’t really know each other as such. I was also like, ‘interesting’ initially,” she recalls.

Ishaan elaborated on the nature of their roles in the series, describing how the characters’ fiery love-hate relationship gave them the freedom to explore new territory as performers. “Working with an actor par excellence like Bhumi was a delight. I don’t think either of us has got to do something like this in our careers yet. We’ve got 8 episodes to flesh it out. The fun is that it wasn’t just all lovey-dovey. There was the cat-and-dog relationship, all the spewing of hate and egos coming in,” he explains.

The actors also addressed the inevitable online trolling that often accompanies unconventional casting decisions. However, both maintained a level-headed perspective. “If it’s gonna happen, it will happen. Today, trolling has become people’s pastime. It doesn’t matter, though,” Bhumi stated firmly. Ishaan added, “It was between not doing this if we paid attention, or this. And since we loved the script so much, everything else didn’t matter.”

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Sakshi Tanwar, Zeenat Aman, Nora Fatehi, Vihaan Samat, Dino Morea, Milind Soman, Chunky Panday, Lisa Mishra, Kavya Trehan, Udit Arora, and Sumukhi Suresh are among the diverse ensemble cast members of The Royals.

The series, which is directed by Priyanka Ghose and Nupur Asthana and produced by Pritish Nandy Communications, will debut on Netflix on May 9.