Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Isn’t Trying to Be a Gold Star Indian Girl

“It's a realization of the fact that we need more representation. We need more stories, we need more storytellers.”

August 3, 2021

When Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is on the set of Never Have I Ever, she moves as if she has an audience watching. For the past month, she has been riding the wave of promotion for season two of the hit Netflix comedy. She’s the lead, of course: Devi Vishwakumar, a teenage half-rebel, half-nerd who seems unable to stay out of trouble, even when her life depends on it (never forget that coyote from season one). It’s a successful role for Maitreyi, but one that has come with more than its fair share of pressure too. Maitreyi’s character is meant to be a single story — that of one Indian teen dealing with the death of her father amid coming-of-age hijinks. But as is wont to happen on the internet, many are scrutinizing her ability to be an accurate representation of the experiences of the entire South Asian diaspora.

That’s a lot to carry, but Maitreyi has navigated her burgeoning fame with confidence, grace, and a style all her own. After a 17-year-old Maitreyi stepped onto set in 2019 to film the first season, it wasn’t long before she told the show's producers that Devi’s family likely wouldn’t wear shoes inside the house or eat Indian food with silverware. Then an acting newcomer, she voiced her concerns out of a desire to make a character she cares so deeply about feel universally real in the small ways she could. “I might be the minority here [on set],” Maitreyi tells Teen Vogue, “but I know the majority of the audience out there, they'll understand.”

Maitreyi, now 19, started filming the show shortly after she graduated high school in Mississauga, Ontario, where she was born and raised after her parents arrived in Canada as refugees from Sri Lanka. Before the show, she was a typical Canadian high school senior, with a résumé populated by school musicals (she played Velma in Chicago) and hopes of pursuing acting in college. The spring before graduation, her best friend sent her Mindy Kaling’s tweet about an open casting call, and the friends, due for a hangout, decided it would be fun to meet and film tapes to submit. Never Have I Ever was the first major production Maitreyi auditioned for, but fast-forward to six tapes and two flights from Ontario to California, and she landed the lead.

The past two years have been an education for Maitreyi, to say the least. Last year, I interviewed her for Teen Vogue right before the premiere of Never Have I Ever, her first professional acting role. When we meet again, this time in person in New York, she’s already been transformed into someone more energetic, self-assured, and unafraid. She feels it too.

Take, for example, the way her attitude has shifted regarding her individual responsibility to represent South Asians in film and television. Since season two came out, Twitter has come to something of a consensus that, as one fan put it, Devi is “one of the messiest characters in existence.” During our conversation, Maitreyi references the tweet — she loves it. Devi is unhinged at times. She is a jerk, Maitreyi agrees. But so what?

“Season one me would have said I feel like I have to defend [the show] because I love it and I'm so protective of it,” she explains. “But now, I don't feel like I have to defend it in any way. I feel like it actually speaks for itself, and I have grown from my 17-year-old self to understand that not everyone's going to relate to it. And that's okay. That's not an attack, it's just a reality.”

“It's a realization of the fact that we need more representation," Maitreyi, who is Tamil-Canadian, adds. "We need more stories, we need more storytellers. We can't just keep relying on Mindy Kaling to keep making all these shows. I want her to keep making more. But I need more people with her.”

After all, discourse about representation in film and TV is still in its infancy, though it may not feel that way when we’re in the thick of it. The power at networks and studios still often lies in the hands of white men. Marginalized people are still receiving milestone nominations and wins during awards season. As for Maitreyi, she’s had a year of learning the mechanics of getting representation onscreen from the inside, while fielding more than enough feedback from the outside. She has come of age at the start of Hollywood’s belated embrace of diverse stories, its questioning of prevalent stereotypes, and she has felt the frustration that comes with that.

“I love Mindy Kaling so much. I love her so much as a boss, of course, a mentor, but also a friend. I truly do love her as someone I can lean on when it comes to these kinds of conversations," Maitreyi says. "Same thing with Hasan Minhaj, a great guy. But reality is, we still only have a handful of South Asian representation. What I want to see is [more] when you dwindle it down to South Asian female representation, and then you dwindle it down even more to young South Asian female representation, right?”

She continues, “Because my first appearance of seeing someone that looked like me was Mindy, in The Office, Mindy Project, whatever — I thought it was really awesome that she was a comedian, she was funny. But then I was also like, 'You're, like, a grown woman. I can't relate to Mindy Lahiri's problems.'”

Maisie Wilen dress; Sweaty Pigeon rings; Camper shoes.

Ultimately, representation doesn’t always require an onscreen clone to find yourself in a character. Maitreyi herself will tell you that, insisting that Never Have I Ever is not strictly a teen show, but a show that’s just about a teenager. She’s adamant about this. She’ll meet fans of all ages and genders — two of whom recognized Maitreyi during this interview — who tell her they found themselves in the various characters in Devi’s orbit, and in the circumstances she finds herself in, such as the show’s handling of grief. Devi, at age 15, might just look like a lot of people’s inner child.

“I think everyone deserves that,” Maitreyi says, referring to the glee of living in a world where art mirrors your life. “My philosophy is, if you are so proud of your identity, whoever that may be, whether it's related to your culture, orientation, or anything in between — if you are so proud in that, that means it's a story that deserves to have screen time, because it's worth it. Clearly there's an audience, and that audience is you.”

The truth is, there’s no world where Maitreyi’s character can represent every South Asian teen experience, and it’s an absurd expectation to place on a single show or character. But Maitreyi has heard it all, including criticisms that Devi’s mom (played by Poorna Jagannathan) isn’t strict enough about boys, that it’s unrealistic for a brown girl to talk back to her family, and that the way she prays to Ganesh isn’t how they would do it. As if there’s a standardized test for Gold Star Indian Girl and she — both as Devi and Maitreyi — is failing.

“It's crazy to me how people will say [about] the South Asian experience, ‘There are many cultures and dialects and backgrounds within South Asians. You can't put us all in one,’” Maitreyi begins, “and then they turn to something like Never Have I Ever and they're like, ‘You don't represent me. How dare you not represent me? You failed.’ And it's like, 'Wait. You heard what you just said, right? Sweetheart, you're so close.'”

Christopher Kane dress; Sweaty Pigeon rings; Brooke Callahan and Sweaty Pigeon necklaces; Camper shoes.

Devi Vishwakumar has now had two seasons of making bad decisions, being a bad friend, and leaning into her worst impulses — honestly, at times it feels like watching a car crash in slow motion. But Devi is also 15, and she doesn’t need to have it all together (maybe no one of any age does). Plus, Devi is still repressing her grief following the loss of her father. If a person’s psychology is delicate and fluid, then a person’s character is too, and you so badly want her redemption.

People might watch Devi and not understand her actions, but it’s also possible that those people remember themselves to be different than they were, perhaps having forgotten the times they put romantic pursuits before friendship, contributed to harmful gossip, or have just been plain mean. “Devi calls it out, because she just bluntly is being a mess in front of us and she's calling us out, because we see ourselves in her,” Maitreyi theorizes of why people are drawn to Devi, despite her mess, and why they still want things to turn out okay. “Sure, we're not telling crazy, crazy rumors that destroy people's reputations. But have we not said things in anger? Have we not all gossiped at one point? Have we not all been in a position where we [have] said or done something that's like, ‘Oh! I just crossed the line. I should not have said that. I really hurt someone. That was an inappropriate thing to say.’”

People of color haven’t had as many opportunities to see themselves in virtuous characters that don’t require a lot of work to love. Perhaps, despite wanting authentic stories and real characters, there is a small part of us that also craves a story about someone who has the good fortune of never messing up while also not being white. There’s a dynamic range of characters in the white movie catalog from the morally perfect to absolute messes, a range we’re still trying to build.

“People want that pretty [character that is] 100% a victim of their circumstances. And to be honest, I don't blame that!” Maitreyi says. “My thing is, it's like, you know what? I want that character too. And I want the messy character. I want the Regina George.”

Speaking of beloved female protagonists, Maitreyi’s next role is heroine hall-of-famer Lizzie Bennet in a Netflix teen comedy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice titled The Netherfield Girls. Maitreyi, obsessed with keeping busy, met the film’s writer and director, Becca Gleason, during a COVID-related production shutdown of Never Have I Ever and landed the part.

The news comes, of course, after a wave of reimagined iconic roles with Black and brown people in the center of the narrative: Zendaya as Spiderman’s MJ, for example, or Halle Bailey as Ariel in The Little Mermaid. And Maitreyi is even getting to work with Becca on making slight changes that reflect that Lizzie Bennet isn’t a white girl this time, because, she says, “we don't need, yet again, people of color inhabiting the shells of white people.”

Kenzo dress; Christopher John Rogers pants; Dr. Martens shoes; Sweaty Pigeon and Brooke Callahan necklaces.

In the heat of New York City summer, we’re sitting on a bench in Battery Park just inches from bushes of flowers that are attracting dozens of honeybees. Maitreyi is completely unfazed, looking at them in wonder, marveling at their full pollen sacs. They belong here, vital and thriving. “You mad collecting honey, girl. Good job,” she says. She nearly attempts a fist bump, realizing at the last second that bees might not understand the congratulations as such. At once, she’s both a comedian and a real-life literary heroine.

Chopova Lowena dress and socks; Sweaty Pigeon rings; H(our) Objects and Brooke Callahan necklaces; Camper shoes.

Maitreyi came into the public eye at the height of the pandemic. The show premiered in April 2020, back when we hardly knew anything about COVID-19, and the most reliable protective measure was caution. So she didn’t get that Hollywood-starlet experience — the red carpets, the parties, the in-person promotions, the standard celebration circuit that usually goes with coming up in Hollywood. Instead, she got to spend the year with her family in Canada, where she grew up. But she doesn’t feel left out; her mom, dad, and brother came to New York with her while she was in the city promoting the new season, and they all seem extremely close.

“I’m not bitter about it because I get to stay with my family at home and stay grounded,” Maitreyi says, unable to resist gushing about how genuinely great they are. “And a big reason why people tell me in interviews, ‘You’re so wise beyond your years,’ or ‘You’re so grounded,’ or ‘You’ve got a great head on your shoulders,’ a big part of that is my family. I could not do all this as well as I am without my fam.”

Maitreyi describes her upbringing in a house of four generations of matriarchs: her great-grandmother, her grandmother, her mother, and her. Generation after generation, they have operated under a philosophy that says they as mothers strive to help their daughters achieve everything they were able to, and then go one step further.

Reflecting on her year and thinking about milestone moments, Maitreyi mentions various accolades and fan interactions, and how perpetually hungry she is for her next move. “There is my brain that said, 'You haven't done enough for 19. You need to do more,'” she says. “I always joke that I can count on one hand how many times I've genuinely been proud of myself and still have fingers left over. Which is a joke, but it's also true.”

Maitreyi is self-assured enough to say things like, “Y'all, I know I'm not going to burn out. I know myself. I'm going to be fine.” And she is self-aware enough to then immediately add, “But that also might just be me being naïve as a 19-year-old.” She likes a moment of certainty before bowing herself out with a joke.

Later, when we are talking about the legacy of the women in her family, she revisits the question of milestones and major moments, and in true teenage fashion, changes her answer. Her biggest moment? Realizing how much influence she has with such a large stage. As she takes on the battles of being a young, brown girl in Hollywood and wins them all, Maitreyi thinks of the three generations of women she learned from while growing up. She believes she might just be on the precipice of her one step further.