2 days Ago By PTI
NEW DELHI: What happens when two individuals from contrasting backgrounds collide? Actors Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter, the stars of cupcoming series "The Royals", hope it leads to a fun show that's reminiscent of a classic love story. The eight-episode drama, pitched as a love story between a prince and a commoner, will premiere on the streamer on May 9. Created by Rangita Pritish Nandy and Ishita Pritish Nandy, the story revolves around Ishaan's Aviraaj Singh, the pauper prince of fictional erstwhile royalty Morpur and Bhumi’s Sophia Shekhar, the CEO of Work Potato.
“The Royals” also features Zeenat Aman, Sakshi Tanwar, Nora Fatehi, Dino Morea, Milind Soman, Chunky Panday, Vihaan Samat, Kavya Trehan, Sumukhi Suresh, Udit Arora, Lisa Mishra and Luke Kenny. It is Bhumi’s first series and the actor said "The Royals" felt special as she has done very few romance dramas in her career. "When this script came my way, I remember I was in hospital with dengue.
I started reading and just couldn't stop and I kept asking for episode after episode...
These are two clashing worlds. The USP of the show is how you kind of see these two worlds come together, clash and yet collaborate in the most beautiful and effective way," she told PTI in an interview. "The way I look at the show is that it's new royalty versus old royalty.
If you see the environment today, it's all about startup culture, entrepreneurs, companies becoming unicorns, female entrepreneurs," she added. Ishaan, fresh off from his much talked about role in international drama "The Perfect Couple", said the story felt fresh and unlike anything that he had done in his career. The actor said during his meeting with the creators they described the show as "snackable and extremely bingeable" and when he read the script, he agreed.
"From the rom-com stand point, it is a fun story with characters that are so different yet you want to see them come together. There is this push and pull in their Tom and Jerry like relationship. Then there is the entire royal aspect and it has a very interesting satirical take on it," he told PTI.
Bhumi described the show as those classic romances that one reads about in books, whether it is the Mills & Boon stories. "When I was a teen, my aunt gifted me about 80 of her ‘Mills and Boon’ books. I have grown up reading those books.
So it is like a classic romance. If you look at 'Pride and Prejudice', it is a classic and even now movies are being made on that. And it will never be stale because everybody loves a good love story between two characters that are polar opposites and yet so similar," she added.
Ishaan, who plays a polo prodigy in the show, also said it will remind one of "a lot of classical takes" on love stories. "They had us doing major physical prep, also polo training, because they needed me to look like a polo prodigy, and gave me only two and a half months. So luckily, I didn't break anything and managed to do all my stunts," the actor said.
According to Ishaan, the advantage that they had was the access to Jaipur's City Palace where they shot major scenes. "We were shooting in the actual Jaipur City Palace with Padmanabh Singh and the entire family just going about their daily lives around it. They were very gracious in allowing us to shoot for quite a long time over there," he said.
Rangita Nandy said audiences are hungry to watch an easy and fun romantic comedy and she and her sister wanted to create a love story in a grand manner. "Writing and mounting a romantic comedy is challenging. It may seem like the easiest emotion in the book to conquer, but hell no.
And we never wanted to make a tiny, personal stakes driven, love story—it had to be big while being personal," she said. "So you have the world of Indian royalty, palaces, elephants, jewels, cars, car races, balls, sports, rave parties, history, coronations, high stakes fashion and strapping them all together, is love," she added. Asked whether the series could be India's answer to "Bridgerton", Nandy said while it is flattering to be compared, their world is different, but she hopes that like the Regency-era romance, their show also reaches every corner of the globe.
"We can all do with a huge dollop of romance in our lives. And there is just not enough content that feeds into that demand." Tanya Bami, Series Head, Netflix India, said, “While ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘Emily in Paris’ showed the world how compelling romantic sagas can be, ‘The Royals’ brings that sizzle and swoon to a world that’s unapologetically Indian.
It’s not just a love story, it’s royalty reimagined with heart, humour and style. And for us, it’s another step in telling stories of love in ways that feel fresh, rooted, and incredibly binge-worthy.”.
