According to casting director Karan Mally, romance has become among the trickiest genres to cast because the audience instantly recognises familiar faces and formulaic storytelling. Finding the leads for Netflix’s Musafir Café then needed “freshness above everything else”. Mally explained, “We wanted the cast to feel authentic rather than familiar. The idea was to find actors who disappeared into their characters so the audience could immerse themselves in the world of Musafir Café. It took months of auditions, but once we found them, everything fell in place.”

A still from ‘Musafir Café’. Pics/Instagram