Ishaan Khatter opened up about his Hollywood debut in The Perfect Couple, where he shot alongside Nicole Kidman in Cape Cod while recovering from a serious hip injury. He shared how he cooked, cleaned, and managed life independently during the four-month shoot, calling it both challenging and rewarding
Ishaan Khatter
Ishaan Khatter made his Hollywood debut with The Perfect Couple in 2024, where he shared the screen with Nicole Kidman. In a conversation with mid-day’s podcast series The Bombay Film Story, Ishaan shared his experience of shooting for the film in the small US town of Cape Cod.
Ishaan Khatter on his Hollywood experience
Asked if he felt out of place on the sets of The Perfect Couple, Ishaan said, "Film sets are like home for me, and I’ve always felt that way. It just feels like a natural environment. Having said that, not that I come in with a massive entourage, but yes, I didn’t have any staff, and I didn’t have any of my own people. Even people who knew my work and were familiar with my journey or my arc as an actor—it was completely new ground. What was particularly difficult for me, even from a physical standpoint, was that I was dealing with a very severe injury, which is something I haven’t talked about publicly. It was very scary for me because I’m a dancer, and I had a labral tear in my hip joint, which made it difficult for me to even walk. Luckily, I’ve now come out of both the projects, and no one has noticed, but it was painful to even walk."
‘Did my own cooking, cleaning’
Further, the actor said that the primary cast did not get hotel rooms but were given homes. "We were there for three and a half or four months. Even for them, it was an unusual way of working because they had blanket dates for most of the actors. All of us in the primary cast were given homes in Cape Cod. It wasn’t like a hotel with staff—you were given a house with three or four bedrooms."
He further said, "You do your grocery shopping—I was doing it all the time. I was getting my groceries, cooking my food, cleaning, doing the laundry, driving myself to set, doing the work, coming back, doing the rehab, and also trying to train and look physically good for the part that later turned out to be a bit of a thirst trap. They didn’t exactly pitch me like that, but when I saw it, I thought, oh, that’s how it looks."
