Earning a place on a cast which already contained the likes of Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber and Dakota Fanning led Ishaan to ask director Susanne why she picked him.
He was taken aback at her answer: “She was like: ‘I feel like you could be happy. You have it in you to be a happy person.’
“She was looking for a similar string in the character,” he says.
But despite having “a young career so far”, he felt prepared enough “to have the self-confidence to hold my own and be myself”.
“So I’m just doing me. I’m not going to do anything different.”
He also credits those names and the wider team for helping him through difficult moments.
Ishaan says filming in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, was a “long, drawn-out process” over four months, and a place where where he experienced homesickness for the first time.
But he says the cast bonded and that proved to be the difference.
“We only had each other’s company,” he says.
“Being able to hang out, do activities like axe-throwing or whale-watching.
“It definitely helped with the homesickness.”
