Meet Rahul Kohli, the newest Indian face on American television

As the warm and witty resident chef, Owen Sharma, on Netflix’s horror series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, actor Rahul Kohli swiftly scored heartthrob status—a distinction he wasn’t exactly prepared for—when the show premiered last month. “I knew Bly would be big,” says the 35-year-old, discussing the eerie gothic romance (a riff on the 1898 Henry James novella, The Turn of the Screw), one of the the most-watched horror shows of the year. “But the fact that people gravitated to [Owen’s] character was just a really nice surprise—I thought I’d just be spammed with tweets about my co-stars,” Kohli adds.

Despite playing a supporting character on the nine-episode series, Kohli, whose previous stints include appearances in British television dramas like EastEnders and Holby City, and a role in CW’s supernatural drama, iZombie, immediately captured the attention of Bly Manor’s creator, Mike Flanagan (of Absentia, Oculus, and Doctor Sleep fame). “About halfway through filming the season, Mike approached me for Midnight Mass,” Kohli reveals, referring to Flanagan’s latest spookfest for Netflix, which he is currently shooting for in Vancouver, Canada.

Vogue India recently caught up with Kohli to discuss his transatlantic journey, personal aversion to horror, and curious India connection. Here are five things to know about the charismatic British performer.

1) His Bly Manor audition was anything but ordinary

“When I do audition tapes, I’m usually around other actors and colleagues,” Kohli shares. “But this time, I read and recorded with my mum in London—and yeah, acting doesn’t run in the family,” he continues with a laugh. Kohli, who shared a snippet from that endearing tryout in a tweet last August, admits his mother may actually be partly responsible for securing Owen’s role. “Someone at Netflix or Paramount saw the blooper reel which kind of warmed them up to me,” he says. “I told [my mum] I’d buy her a handbag of choice when I booked Bly,” he unveils. “I think she’s eyed up a Louis Vuitton so at some point, I have to honour that.”

2) He’s a self-admitted ‘scaredy-cat’ 

“As a child, I was scared of everything,” divulges Kohli, whose long list of fears once featured the dark, animals, and even amusement park rides. “There’s a scene in Batman where Bruce Wayne’s parents are killed, they’re walking outside the theatre and going down an alley. Every time I was with my mum and dad in a car park as a kid, I’d get heart palpitations and anxiety. Horror was off-limits for me,” he explains. “What’s weird is I now have the stomach for it, but I still don’t watch it because the kid in me goes, ‘no, you can’t handle it.’”

3) He’s quietly crusading against racial stereotypes

“I reject a lot of scripts,” Kohli says. “It’s easy for me to shoot down working in a 7-Eleven or being the Indian guy getting an arranged marriage even though he doesn’t want one. I want to create a safer space that’s more inclusive and progressive.” Case in point: when Kohli was cast as Dr Ravi Chakrabarti, the eccentric medical examiner in iZombie, he wanted to avoid asexual Indian sidekick territory. “The creators were like, ‘we’re actually going to lean more into Ravi’s British-isms,” he recalls. “And I was like, awesome.’ But I don’t harbour any resentment for Indian actors who are up-and-coming and need to take those stereotypical roles,” he clarifies. “My advice to them is take those parts, get in there, then rebel against them.”

4) His relationship with India is…complicated

“It’s not a straightforward answer,” Kohli says of his South Asian heritage. Born in England to Indian immigrant parents (his father spent childhood years in Kenya while his mother was raised in Thailand), he’s only visited India once, as a three-year-old. “My mother will back me up on this, but I was a kid who rejected Indian food before I could even speak; I wanted chicken nuggets. People look at me and accuse me of white-washing myself or distancing myself from Indian culture, but that’s not something I’ve done consciously,” he clarifies. “It’s just that I’m third-generation Indian and can’t change who I am. I still have to get around to some of the gymnastics of representing a culture I’m not the closest to. But then I’ll get messages from young Indian men in Britain or America, talking about what it feels like to watch me on a Netflix show and what that does to them at 15 or 16, and that makes me proud of my journey—I feel like I’m doing it for them. I want to take on that responsibility because it’s helping me heal and go ‘hi, my name’s Rahul not Raul, and I do know one Bollywood song: ‘My Name is Lakhan.’”

5) He credits America for jump-starting his career

“England’s the only place I’d call home,” he insists. “But as far as work’s concerned, we’ve never been able to click—I know how dire things were for me prior to iZombie, and if it was up to London, I’d probably be doing something else by now. I was never able to break past certain ceilings there,” he muses. “Then Rob Thomas [the creator of iZombie] comes along, sees my tape, and has me leapfrog every barrier one has to go through in a network show. I spent so long in the UK feeling terrible about myself—America’s been the one to save me, they’ve kept me fed. So, I’m not chomping at the bit to go home.”

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