The Royal Family

**ALL HAIL THE MESS: The Real-Life Drama Behind Netflix’s The Royals (2025)**

When Netflix dropped The Royals in 2025, it promised a glossy Indian palace rom‑com. What we got instead? A full‑blown off‑screen saga with trolling, royal outrage, shirtless wars, latestnetflix.com argues, and one leading lady quietly exiting the throne room.

Pull up a velvet chaise. Here’s the juiciest real-world gossip circling the series, its stars, and the very real royals it offended.

On-Set Drama & Creative Clashes

Ishaan Khatter vs. The Shirtless Script

Prince Aviraaj might be allergic to shirts on screen, but behind the scenes, Ishaan Khatter was not thrilled about being turned into Netflix’s thirst trap of the year.

• Ishaan admitted he “fought with the makers” over what he felt were gratuitous shirtless scenes and objectification. He pushed back on days when he felt, very reasonably, “I could have worn a shirt in certain scenes.”
• He describes the creative clash bluntly: “Since I had committed, I went for it, but I did fight with them on certain days… ‘Iss scene mein kya zarurat hai?’”
• The team allegedly tried to justify the semi-nudity with script tweaks—like making him sleep under a blanket instead of in a T‑shirt. Ishaan still went along, but only after voicing clear discomfort about being turned into walking abs content.

On the surface, everyone stayed professional. Between the lines, you can almost hear him muttering, “I signed up to play a prince, not a torso.”

Cast Feuds & Trolling: Bhumi vs. The Internet

The Trolling That Broke a Leading Lady

While Ishaan fought for shirts, Bhumi Pednekar was fighting the internet—and losing her peace of mind.

• After The Royals dropped, Bhumi was hit with vicious trolling about both her performance and her looks. Reddit threads and social posts tore into her, with some users calling the series a “slow shiny train wreck” and taking cheap shots at her appearance rather than the script.
• The backlash was so intense she took a nine‑month acting hiatus. She later revealed she felt “numb,” “lost,” and “depleted” as an actor, and even questioned, “Can I actually act?”
• In interviews, she admitted she hadn’t set foot on a film set since June 2025, pulled out of a project, and instead buried herself in books, movies, and even a Harvard course to rebuild her confidence.

Her Clapback at Appearance Trolls

Trolls particularly fixated on her lips and face, accusing her of “fake” looks. Bhumi finally snapped back in style:

• In a resurfaced clip and coverage of the backlash, she shrugged off the hate with a pointed reminder: people are “paying lakhs to get that” look.
• She later told The Hollywood Reporter India that there was “a lot of trolling, a lot of bots,” but she tried to separate vitriol from “constructive criticism” to actually grow from the experience.

Translation: the internet tried to snatch her crown, she went to Harvard and came back with a sharper tiara.

Exit Scandals: Why Bhumi Is Missing from Season 2

Official Line: “Just Story, Not Spice”

By mid‑2026, one thing was clear: Bhumi Pednekar would not return for Season 2.

• Reports across Bollywood outlets confirmed she’d exited the series, as the writers chose to pivot from the fizzy enemies‑to‑lovers romance to a broader, palace‑heavy royal family drama.
• A “source close to the production” stressed there was “no fight with Bhumi”—just a narrative reshuffle: “There was no decision to carry [the romance] forward… The makers are simply letting the story lead forward organically in the second season.”

The Unofficial Read: Trolling + Pivot = Quiet Ouster

While everyone insists there was no showdown, the timeline tells its own story:

• Bhumi admits the trolling and criticism after The Royals left her “numb” and caused her to step away from acting for months.
• Trade pieces and entertainment columns link her exit directly to the Season 1 backlash and the decision to junk the central romance for a wider “royal universe.”
• Commentators and social posts note that her trolling “resulted in her not being there in Season 2,” hinting at a mix of audience pressure and creative cover story.

Meanwhile, Bhumi’s already lining up darker, more layered projects: a courtroom drama backed by the Haq team, a Netflix film reportedly marking Imran Khan’s comeback, and Daldal 2—very much a “don’t worry about me, I upgraded” energy.

Scandals & Controversies: When Real Royals Got Mad

Royal Families vs. Netflix: “We Don’t Sell Palaces for Bat Poop”

The biggest twist didn’t come from the writer’s room—it came from real Indian royals.

• Heritage platform Royal Fables, claiming to speak on behalf of 565 princely states, issued an open letter to Netflix after watching The Royals and basically said: absolutely not.
• Their main complaints:
• The show portrays Indian royals as broke, petty, and desperate, allegedly flogging palaces and heirlooms to survive.
• Royal Fables fumed, “Royal families are not poor. They are not selling their palaces or making money from bat poop!”
• They slammed a scene where Bhumi’s CEO character gifts a hugely expensive Raja Ravi Varma painting to a Rajmata as a business pitch, calling it unrealistic and offensive: “Surely no Ravi Varma that costs hundreds of crores is ever sold.”

Maharani Radhikaraje Gaekwad Joins the Fight

The backlash wasn’t anonymous:

• Maharani Radhikaraje Gaekwad of Baroda publicly criticised the show for creating a distorted, “politically incorrect” image of modern royals, insisting they’re active entrepreneurs, hoteliers, and cultural custodians—not dusty relics lounging on ugly red sofas.
• She argued that even fiction has a responsibility: “Even when you produce fiction, you have to portray the world you create honestly. It has to be researched… Baseless portrayal is uncalled for.”

The Internet’s Response: “Touch Some Grass, Maharani”

Social media did what social media does:

• The Royal Fables post and coverage of the backlash went viral for all the wrong reasons, with commenters mocking the outrage.
• Netizens fired off lines like “Touch some grass, Maharani”, essentially telling the real royals to relax about a frothy Netflix rom‑com.
• The backlash to the backlash became its own show, with audiences largely siding with “it’s just TV, calm down,” even as heritage voices begged for historical accuracy.

Romance Rumors & BTS Chemistry

Ishaan Khatter & Nora Fatehi: The Flirty “Queen” of His Phone

While the scripted romance between Ishaan and Bhumi got mixed reviews, fans quickly pivoted to a different ship: Ishaan & Nora Fatehi.

• Entertainment pages highlighted a behind‑the‑scenes photo dump where Ishaan shared a towel‑wrapped pic with Nora, revealing she’d saved her contact in his phone as “Nora Da… queen.”
• He teased her in the caption; she fired back with, “OMG this pic, my favourite! And yes, that’s my name.”
• Nora also posted a glam shot in a saree with the clapboard, calling herself “The baddie, Princess Ayesha being iconic and dangerous.”
• Their dance numbers and rehearsal clips went viral, with TikTok edits and YouTube thumbnails screaming about their “INCREDIBLE chemistry.”

Unverified but very loud: Fans on Reddit and TikTok speculate there’s more than just good choreography between them, but there’s no confirmed dating scoop—only flirty banter and a lot of wishful shipping.

Casting Controversies & Audience Backlash

“What Were the Casting Directors Thinking?”

Over on r/BollyBlindsNGossip, viewers did not hold back:

• A now‑popular thread titled “The Royals, what were the casting directors thinking?” tore into the show’s choices, especially the pairing of Ishaan and Bhumi, with many calling their chemistry flat and the writing weaker than the wardrobe.
• Another user bluntly declared they found Ishaan and Nora’s chemistry more appealing than “whatever Bhumi was doing,” turning what should’ve been a central love story into background noise in the fandom’s eyes.

Bhumi’s “Casting Controversy”

The Times of India even ran a piece explicitly labelling it “Bhumi Pednekar’s ‘The Royals’ casting controversy”, asking whether social media has changed how actors are cast—and implicitly whether the backlash against her look and performance reflected a new, harsher casting climate.

Renewal Rage: Hate-Watched into Season 2

Just when critics thought they were done dragging it, Netflix renewed The Royals:

• A widely shared Facebook post snarked that critics were “baffled” and audiences “enraged” that the show—described as “algorithm bait with abs and accents”—was getting Season 2 despite scathing reviews.
• The move fueled theories that hate‑watching and online buzz, not quality, are what really matter to streamers.

Wild Trivia & Fan-Favorite Nuggets

Zeenat Aman’s Second Coming

• Legendary star Zeenat Aman used The Royals to rediscover her love for cinema, telling press the show re‑ignited her passion for being on set after years away. Her presence lent old‑school glamour that many viewers praised as the best part of the show.

Celebrity Chef Cameo Overload

• Celebrity chef Saransh Goila makes a cameo in episodes 4 and 5. Post‑release, he revealed his phone was flooded with texts from fans reacting to his brief turn in royal kitchens—arguably the most universally beloved “character” in the series.

The Ending That Sparked Theories

• The finale’s “shocking truth” about the Maharaja’s identity spawned a wave of explainers and fan theories.
• Outlets like GQ India broke down the twist, while fans spun unconfirmed speculations that the entire royal lineage might be a fabrication or that Season 2 would retcon the monarchy altogether. None of this is confirmed, but the confusion kept the show trending long after people finished hate‑watching it.

Bottom line:

The Royals might be marketed as a light, fizzy rom‑com, but off screen it’s a full‑tilt prestige drama: a lead actor battling objectification, a lead actress pushed into a hiatus by trolls, irate real‑life royals drafting open letters, and a fanbase that abandoned the central couple to ship the side characters. If you came for palace scandals, you got them—just not always where you expected.