Ishaan Khatter, Bhumi Pednekar open up about working together in The Royals, and how trolling is now 'people's pastime'

Ishaan Khatter and Bhumi Pednekar are working together for the first time in the Netflix show, The Royals.

Ishaan Khatter and Bhumi Pednekar have been paired together on screen for the first time in Netflix's upcoming romantic comedy show, The Royals. The cast announcement had intrigued fans, with many amused and others surprised. But after the trailer was launched, many were praising their chemistry. "It was the same graph for us," says Ishaan with a laugh. (

Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter in Netflix's new rom-com, The Royals.

Ishaan and Bhumi on working together

Ahead of the show's release, the two actors speak to HT about the show and working with each other. Bhumi reveals the two had joint script readings to build that rapport. "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 says.

Ishaan talks about how the show's love-hate equation between the two protagonists allowed them to be truly free. He explains, “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.”

On handling trolling and negativity

In the age of social media, any new pairing or experimental cast pairing is often met with some amount of derision or hate. But the two actors say it was never on their minds. "If it's gonna happen, it will happen. Today, trolling has become people's pastime. It doesn't matter, though," says Bhumi matter-of-factly. Ishaan sums up their approach, "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."

The Royals also stars Sakshi Tanwar, Zeenat Aman, Nora Fatehi, Vihaan Samat, Dino Morea, Milind Soman, Chunky Panday, Lisa Mishra, Kavya Trehan, Udit Arora, and Sumukhi Suresh. Produced under Pritish Nandy Communications and directed by Priyanka Ghose and Nupur Asthana, it releases on Netflix on May 9.