Poorna Jagannathan on ‘Never Have I Ever’ season two, representation and wanting to turn producer

My job has its perks, including early access to Netflix’s season two of Never Have I Ever, which made life a smidge better. So, when, on a school night, my boyfriend walks in on me with my feet up on the sofa, with pizza and Diet Coke in hand, devouring Paxton’s abs, Devi’s gloriously messy life and Nalini’s new-found self-assuredness, he simply turns around and walks away. An understanding hangs in the air—no fight over the remote, no judgement, just an acknowledgment that we all need a little young-adult drama in our lives every now and then.

I make this behind-closed-doors admission to Poorna Jagannathan, the brilliant actor who plays Dr Nalini Vishwakumar on the series, in our Zoom interview the next day, and she assures me I’m not alone. “We’re all teenyboppers when we watch the show… It’s our childhood experiences on a screen, and they hold the key to so much of who we are as adults.” Truer words have never been said.

When the show released in 2020, with Mindy Kaling as executive producer, and a writers’ room packed with people of colour, it felt like a coup. Finally, the world had a TV show that took us inside an immigrant Indian home, complete with model minority traps and well-meaning judgemental aunties. In season two, all of those tropes that made us feel seen, come to a culmination. 

As I discover over the course of our meandering conversation, Jagannathan is a global nomad. She has spent time travelling to far-off places, inhabiting cultures, languages and stories along the way. In fact, her own story isn’t too far from that of Devi’s. 

Season two kicks off with an impending move to India for the Vishwakumar family, setting off a cavalier Devi, who makes a slew of bad decisions only to realise that (newsflash) the move no longer stands. Jagannathan, who was born in Tunisia, and has lived in Spain, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Ireland and now America, moved on from each location too quickly, making her no stranger to the pros and pitfalls of zero accountability. The pro: an ability to take on any accent, a chameleonic quality that has kept her in good stead as an advertising professional-turned-actor. 

The pandemic, however, has put a pause on this woman-of-the-world’s free movement. “For the first time in 48 years, I’m not moving anywhere, and suddenly I’m accountable and thinking about the long-term repercussions of my actions,” she says with a laugh. However, being in one place has also brought a sense of belonging for the award-winning actor: “Living in the same house, meeting the same friends and doing the same commute every day has given me a sense of home I have never had. I now find routine unbelievably beautiful.”

A similar sense of self-discovery permeates the Jagannathan’s on-screen performance. The last time we saw Nalini, she was pouring her husband’s ashes into the ocean, wearing a sombre nondescript white sari. As season two takes flight, so does Nalini’s wardrobe. We witness bold brocade suits, cashmere monotone knits and bright blue saris. This is a woman on the brink of a new life. “Often, immigrants on American television are portrayed as dowdy and cheap. But the creators of the show and the costume designer, Salvador Perez, really envisioned Nalini as a professional woman who knows how to put herself together,” explains Jagannathan of the vision behind a closet that curates the character. The actor herself played a pivotal role in sourcing the clothes for the show.  

Dress, much like language, is a way to integrate ourselves into new environments. It is a way to unearth common ground in unfamiliar territories. And a read on Nalini’s wardrobe, filled with Ikai kurtas, Anita Dongre saris and Cuyana elevated basics, reveals that she represents two worlds. “Nalini fuses her two cultures in everything she wears. At home she has an Indian aesthetic that embodies a Western comfort, and outside, her clothes reflect a more American look while still encompassing an Indian flavour,” explains Shilpa Shah, co-founder of Cuyana, a brand that peppers Nalini’s on-screen character arc with its clothes. 

TV shows today have come a long way from being versions of ancient minstrelsy. Part of the shift has been minorities taking storytelling into their own hands. Jagannathan, who has played pivotal representational roles in Big Little Lies Season 2 (2019), The Night Of (2016), Ramy (2019), Better Call Saul (2018) and more, is also planning on a producer-focused role for the future. “If you are a person of colour, you cannot wait for someone else to tell your story. You don’t have that luxury. I wish I could just be an actor, but if you’re committed to telling stories like yours, you probably have to do it yourself.” 

I ask her what ‘good representation’ means to her. “It means hard work,” she says. “Never Have I Ever worked because someone put in the work and didn’t take those shortcuts of going to familiar faces and people they already knew,” she explains, rattling off statistics of the most diverse set of actors, writers and directors a show has ever seen. “For diversity to work there needs to be an ecosystem of diversity feeding it.” 

It also comes down to the script that stands on non sequiturs used in crafty ways that make you cry-laugh. In the June issue of Vogue India, scriptwriter and co-producer of the show, Amina Munir shared her journey of feeling let down by the myopic representation of South Asian women on-screen as either oppressed and/or too academically focused. Jagannathan concurs, “When we are portrayed as the model minority, as competent and having our shit together all the time, there is no space left for stories of tremendous loss or pain and grief… My own family is a series of successful, accomplished individuals, but within those stories there is tremendous tragedy of loss, of suicide, of depression, of addiction, of sexual violence. To be human is to experience both, and we are only seeing a sliver of that experience.” 

Never Have I Ever season two is a comedy that flips the lid on those untold narratives. Devi’s precious only-brown-girl-in-a-room card is suspended with the introduction of another brown student, Aneesa. The MIL, always portrayed as a vicious character in Indian TV shows, takes a supportive turn here. Metaphors and underlying messages of husbands as cheerleaders-in-chief for their wives’ successes are highlighted, and a neat and perfect character like Nalini is allowed to sneak kisses with her colleague without the judgment of her teenage daughter. 

The real and raw intergenerational dialogue of women of colour, with room for fallibility and flaws, is what makes Never Have I Ever the perfect feet-up on the sofa, pizza-in-hand kind of watch. Or as Jagannathan puts it, “Like watching internal jokes that feel very lived-in because they are founded on our inner lives and trajectories, conveyed accurately and respectfully in a comedy.”

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