Meet the newest American Indian family to hit Netflix with its latest show, Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever

Meet Devi Vishwakumar—a 15-year-old Indian American living in the San Fernando Valley of California with an overbearing mother (Nalini) and an overachieving cousin (Kamala). The first generation teenager is “Devy” at school and just “Devi” at home. Devi’s smart to the point that she gets called an “unfuckable nerd” at school, dreams of getting into Princeton University, has very thick arm hair, and has many other makings of your stereotypical South Asian character in American cinema (think Raj Koothrappali from The Big Bang Theory). But, Devi is also short-tempered, gets hysterical when she doesn't get things her way, is unabashed about her decisions, barely gets along with her mom, constantly jealous of her perfect Indian cousin, and obsessed with losing her virginity. Though a Hindu, she admits she’ll probably grow up to be “an atheist who eats cheeseburgers everyday with (her) white boyfriend” and believes that she’s a “glamorous woman of colour who deserves to have a sexy life.” Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s coming-of-age romcom series, Never Have I Ever, tells the story of not just a teenager navigating relationships, school, family, and life, but also of a family trying to be a family while each of its unique members try to find their niche between their native and acquired culture. That such nuanced and complex characters should come out of Kaling is hardly a surprise—the actor-writer-director has been outspoken about the cliched portrayal of South Asians in American television and the script is loosely based on Kaling’s own life.

Vogue interviewed two fierce brown women playing lead roles in the show—Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Devi) and Poorna Jagannathan (Devi’s mom)—on being part of Kaling’s Never Have I Ever.

One of their own

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the 18-year-old Tamil-Canadian who beat out 15,000 hopefuls to play Devi, opened up to us about her experience enacting the one-of-a-kind character of Devi. “Finding where you fit within your culture and heritage is something that Devi, myself, and many others from all ethnicities can relate to. That in-between feeling trying to find a place where you feel you belong is complicated, especially when the world wants to put you in a stereotypical box but you know you are so much more than that. I went through a similar experience in high school when it came to finding my identity as a Tamil-Canadian. This is reality for many youth growing up all over the world.” And that struggle is really what the show tackles beautifully. Echoing Ramakrishnan’s words, a frustrated Devi exclaims at one point in the show, “Some loser tells me I’m too Indian, some other people think I’m not Indian enough.” As you get invested in Devi’s journey—even before you want the teenager to succeed, find love, get laid, or get along with her mom—you want her to just belong.

The other rich and nuanced character in the show is Nalini, a single mother and dermatologist who has one foot in her relatively orthodox Indian culture, and one in the liberal Western world. Nalini is trying to cope with the sudden and recent death of her husband (played by Jagannath’s own husband Sendhil Ramamurthy), trying to keep her niece and daughter grounded in their Hindu culture while attempting to be a good parent. She’s strict with high expectations from her daughter, as is typical of an Indian mother, but has a sense of (sardonic) humour about it. The role is carried out flawlessly by Poorna Jagannathan, who’s previously done roles in HBO’s The Night Of and season two of Big Little Lies, as well as in the dark comedy Delhi Belly. “I actually say no to a lot of roles that have immigrant Indian women in them, because they are usually portrayed as caricatures: submissive, and preoccupied with getting their children married off. Their own stories are hugely subsumed by these tropes. But in this show, I got to play a single mother who is in grief—dealing with the loss of her beloved husband. An immigrant awkwardly straddling two cultures, and raising a daughter who is out of control,” says Jagannath. Yes, stern parenting of a rebellious daughter is a huge part of her role, but that’s what it remains—just a part. Case in point, in an episode where the Vishwakumar family is expected to be at its best behaviour courtesy a potential suitor coming in to meet Kamala, her secret boyfriend and Devi’s crush show up at the house at the same time. Though Nalini is far from being pleased, she is not shocked or melodramatic either. Rather, her bitterness translates into entertaining sarcasm for the audience as she remarks, “There are more boys coming and going in this house than the GameStop at the mall.”

Another aspect of her character that stands out for Jagannath are Nalini’s fashion choices. To avoid the usual immigrant mom cliches, costume designer Salvador Perez and Kaling made Nalini toggle effortlessly between western and Indian designers—a Zara in one scene and an Anita Dongre or a Payal Khandwala in the next.

Diverse in every sense of the word

Devi’s best friends are Eleanor, also Asian American, and Fabiola, who’s biracial. Her crush is part-white and part-Japanese, and her therapist is African American. “This show doesn’t pay lip service to diversity: it is diverse to its core,” says Jagannath, commending the balanced gender and ethnic ratio of the show’s writing room—which also has two Indian writers—in addition to the diverse cast. Ramakrishnan adds, “The diversity of this cast is not token. It is intentional, and truly reflective of the complex nature of each character. Each of us had the creative space and opportunity, encouraged by Mindy and Lang, to completely own our characters and bring our own experience into the process.”

Kaling has been unapologetic about her expectations with representation in American television. Women of colour should not only deserve more screen space, but also more room as creators. And who better to create relatable characters than the people who’ve lived their stories? 

The road ahead

Speaking of relatable South Asian characters in contemporary television, Jagannath lauded Irrfan Khan’s nuanced portrayal in HBO’s drama In Treatment, “He brought all these beautiful mannerisms into the room…so uniquely Indian—enough to make clear he was culturally an outsider, but not too much to make him a caricature.” Ramakrishnan is a fan of Hasan Minaj’s Patriot Act and the comedian’s ability to break stereotypes and unpack world challenges by “just being himself.”

For both Ramakrishnan and Jagannathan, the show seems to mean much more than just a career milestone. It feels like being part of a larger cultural revolution within American television, one that would shift perceptions to avoid boxing brown characters into an exotic category and instead create empathy with them. “If you take the Vishwakumars out and replace them with the Jones, the show still works, but it is all the more powerful the Never Have I Ever way because it tells the world that brown families are no different from their white neighbours. Hopefully others will see this and realise it's time for them to start prioritising authentic representation for their own projects,” says Vishwakumar.

Never Have I Ever Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix