Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Is Done With School. On TV, Anyway.
When we last saw Devi, she had about as much life as she could handle. She had just cashed in Ben’s handwritten coupon for “one free boink” — and, in doing so, traded in her long-detested V-Card. The final season picks up in the chaos of the aftermath, but Devi also has to focus on her academic future as she heads into senior year. There are friendships and romantic prospects to balance, yes, but also admissions counselors to meet, universities to visit.
Ramakrishnan, who grew up just outside Toronto, in Mississauga, Ontario, was once a normal teenager navigating high school herself, a first-generation daughter of Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka. Like Devi, who is Indian American, she was raised in a multigenerational home — and still lives there with her family. She is also, like Devi, an ardent nerd in her own right. (Her Instagram account is filled with past cosplay looks, and she spent the last several minutes of our call bestowing video game tips.)
Any sense of normalcy changed quickly after she answered an open casting call during her senior year, in 2019, from Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, the creators of “Never.” She beat out more than 15,000 others for the role, her first professional acting gig. Other jobs have followed: She lent her voice to the Disney/Pixar animated feature “Turning Red” (2022), and she has been cast in the upcoming Netflix film “The Netherfield Girls,” a modern adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.”
In a video call late last month from an Airbnb in Los Angeles, Ramakrishnan shared her thoughts about wrapping up the series, finishing her first full year of college and sharing said Airbnb with her grandmother. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Source: The New York Times
