Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

The star of the Netflix dramedy 'Never Have I Ever' has just finished filming season 4 as season 3 lands on Netflix.

She wants time to be young, to see where this story goes, to look a little harder into the mirror between herself and Devi. Because, as she puts it, “I don’t think we ever really stop coming of age.” A shrug is audible in her voice when she lets slip, “However many years from now, maybe I get to pull a Mindy and I get to have my own production company that creates projects.” But that’s a classic Ramakrishnan-ism: self-assurance, paired with a winking slice of, Who knows? “I think she will have longevity in this industry, because she’s already had the moment where people have loved her and then people have said mean things to her,” she says. He later adds, “I have no doubt that her and I are going to be friends for life.” They don’t catch a break.” Lewison backs up her account a few days before the cast wraps filming: “I think the way the writers approached this fourth season has been with such care and with such tenacious and meticulous planning that I think we all feel comforted by the fact that it was a perfect sendoff. If there are people out there in the world that don’t like golden retriever puppies, there sure as hell are going to be people that don’t like me,” she says. “She has moved forward and has stayed true to herself.” Never Have I Ever is not meant to stand for all South Asian identities and experiences, nor to be the quintessential, all-encompassing, perfect “brown show,” she says. She was funny when she came in the room, and she had frizzy hair and thick glasses, was just like, ‘What’s up?’ She dabbed a couple times.” Kaling and Fisher whittled down the list to two final actresses: Ramakrishnan and “a very polished actress with a longer resume,” Fisher says. Ramakrishnan can recall the exact date Never Have I Ever season 1 landed on Netflix: “April 27, 2020,” she says. “But there’s also the fear that you’re exposing them to the ugliest parts of Hollywood and humanity.” “And that carried me through.” Plus—unlike overachiever Devi—when Ramakrishnan was in school, she had no qualms with occasionally skipping class, showing up at 1:30 in the afternoon when the day officially began at 8:30 a.m. “But I still pulled the grade,” Ramakrishnan adds, with no small dose of Devi’s snark. For one thing, she was never as boy-crazy as the temperamental Devi Vishwakumar, whose dramatic love triangle at a California high school warrants narrative voiceover by tennis legend John McEnroe. “I was the kind of person that had one crush all throughout high school,” Ramakrishnan says.