Indian call centre worker Priya Sethi (Shreya Saran, left) travels to San Francisco to see Granger Woodruff (Jesse Metcalfe), who she met over the phone in the cross-cultural romance The Other End of the Line. (MGM-Adlabs Films)

He’s a Hollywood hottie famous for playing John Rowland, the shirtless gardener who seduces Eva Longoria with his washboard abs, perfectly manicured eyebrows and winsome smile on Desperate Housewives. She’s a Bollywood starlet who danced her way from classical pirouettes to the Indian film industry’s hip-shaking numbers, stirring up controversy along the way by posing in bikinis for India’s Maxim magazine.

If Jesse Metcalfe and Shreya Saran’s on-screen romance in The Other End of the Line had carried over off-screen, it would have been a match made in Hollywood-Bollywood heaven. Even so, this new movie marries two film industries from opposing sides of the world.

The Other End of the Line is a collaboration between MGM Studios and Mumbai-based Adlabs Films. The movie tells the story of Priya Sethi (Saran), a Mumbaikar call centre worker with a fake American accent who handles the credit-card indiscretions of a New York advertising consultant named Granger Woodruff (Metcalfe). Their phone conversations start off quite formal and soon become flirtatious, to the point where Priya flies to San Francisco to keep up with the fantasy she’s spun. Cross-continental comedy ensues.

This is just the latest in a number of hook-ups between Bollywood and Hollywood. Disney recently partnered with India’s Yash Raj Films for the Hindi animated film Roadside Romeo, while Reliance ADA Group signed a $1.5 billion deal with DreamWorks to launch a new film company.

Director James Dodson describes The Other End of the Line as a typical American romantic comedy, only the settings happen to be San Francisco and Mumbai.

“[We’re] trying to provide a fresh take on the American romantic comedy traditions like Sleepless in Seattle [and] Pretty Woman,” Dodson says in a phone interview from Beverly Hills. “When I first read the script, I really believed there was a girl named Priya Sethi and a New York guy named Granger Woodruff, and this was a story that could kick out the way it happened, with the occasional romantic comedy conceit thrown in — like jumping on a plane and meeting this boy in San Francisco.”

Metcalfe says before he landed in Mumbai to start shooting, he had never paid much attention to Bollywood movies. He was drawn to the visual flair of Bollywood filmmaking, but was relieved to learn that his role didn’t demand any dancing skill. In one scene, however, he had to navigate the city’s chaotic traffic.

“I had to run on the streets of Mumbai to catch a rickshaw,” he says, describing the (unscripted) vehicular snarl on the city’s thoroughfares, which can be daunting for even seasoned jaywalkers. (“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my art,” Metcalfe jokes.) Although Indian fans of Desperate Housewives harassed Metcalfe for autographs and photos during his shoot, he says it’s co-productions like this one that will help him conquer cinema audiences across the world.

Metcalfe describes The Other End of the Line as a cross-cultural, long-distance romance, something he himself has experienced. “It can be challenging to connect with someone who grew up in a completely different place, and has very different values, and very different expectations put upon them by their family. There can be, a lot of times, miscommunications.”

Priya Sethi in a scene from The Other End of the Line. (MGM-Adlab Films)

Saran’s character in The Other End of the Line is an adventurous young woman caught between fulfilling her family’s wish for her to settle down in an arranged marriage and pursuing her dream of falling in love on her own terms. In the movie, Priya learns about the minutiae of American slang, as well as about culinary delights like ribs. Granger, on the other hand, gets an education in the sort of respect that should be accorded to Priya’s parents — and also gets a few tips on how to win them over.

Saran, born to a middle-class Indian family and a graduate in English literature from a New Delhi girls’ college, trained to become a classical Indian dancer. Her dance guru suggested an audition for a music video, which eventually led to offers from South Indian and Bollywood films. Six years after her debut in Ishtam (2001), Saran became a household name in India starring opposite South Indian legend Rajnikanth in Sivaji: The Boss. Saran plays a part in Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta’s upcoming film, What’s Cooking, Stella, which also features Water stars Lisa Ray and Seema Biswas.

For Saran, The Other End of the Line offered a chance to experience a different approach to filmmaking. “[We] worked on every line and talked about it. I started believing in Priya,” Saran says, referring to the workshop sessions with the American crew. Bollywood scripts are often rewritten on the fly, making the acting largely improvised.

Due to the growing interest in India as a cinematic backdrop, it has become commonplace to see veteran Indian actors in similar co-productions, such as Bollywood/Hollywood (2002), Bride and Prejudice (2005) or Outsourced (2006). Indian film luminary Anupam Kher, who recently opened a Bollywood acting school in London, England, appears in The Other End of the Line as Saran’s father. North American audiences may recognise him from Bend It Like Beckham, the British soccer movie that made Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra famous. (Kher carried on playing Nagra’s father in a few episodes of the TV show ER.)

Director Dodson says that some of the Hollywood actors in the film were baffled by the procedures. “[Bollywood actors] work in shifts,” says Dodson. “So you’ll shoot a dance number, then party for two weeks, and edit that sequence maybe, then shoot another shift for another series of scenes. And they work on two, three films at the same time. So these Indian actors would come for auditions and ask, ‘How many shifts are you shooting this in?’ I had no idea what they were talking about.”

In cross-cultural productions such as this one, there are boundless opportunities for lines to get lost in translation and for the script to fall into cliché. While The Other End of the Line doesn’t fully avoid these pitfalls, Dodson says he was intent on presenting a real picture of Priya’s life.

“Believe me, I would have loved to make it more kitschy, because it would be more fun,” he says. “But we stayed true to Priya’s story. Here’s a young woman, growing up, finding her way in the world, and she discovers, as Granger discovers, that her choices are much more broad than she woke up to believe they were.”

The Other End of the Line opens Oct. 31.

Aparita Bhandari is a writer based in Toronto.