Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the breakthrough star of Netflix’s series ‘Never Have I Ever’, is no longer an unknown face. Plucked out of 15,000 actresses by show creator Mindy Kaling for the lead role of Devi, the young Tamil-Canadian actress rose to fame overnight. Ramakrishnan gave an emotional performance in the comedy drama, which deals with grief, teen romance and friendship. But, who exactly is this budding talent? We give you five things to know.
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1. Born in Mississauga, Ontario, Maitreyi is an up-and-coming Canadian actress, who is originally Tamil. Her parents moved to Canada to escape from the war in Sri Lanka. Here’s what she had to say about her cultural identity to Now Toronto: “I want other Tamils all over the world to feel pride that Tamil people are making it.” In another interview with Brown Girl Magazine, Ramakrishnan said on a scale of one to Ryan Reynolds.
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2. She wants people to learn how to pronounce her name correctly — which, by the way, is pronounced My-tray-ee. “Tamil names are super long. My entire full name [is] 20 letters … I think names are so important,” she told Variety. “I think one of the greatest disrespects you can do to a person is not put the effort into somebody’s name. Personally for me, I used to anglicise my name … in high school, and then when I landed in LA, they were like, ‘How do you say your name? Sorry, I don’t want to mix it up.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is my chance to reclaim my name,’ because I love my name. Why would I change it?”
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3. Ramakrishnan is 18-years-old. The teen actress celebrated her big birthday shortly before New Year’s Eve, on December 30, making her a Capricorn. Her onscreen love interest Paxton Hall-Yoshida, however, is played by the 29-year-old actor Darren Barnett — 11 years her elder — putting him into the strange category of adult actors playing young teens. In the series, Ramakrishnan plays 15-year-old Devi, while Barnet plays 16-year-old Paxton.
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4. This is her first ever acting role — and she got it straight out of high school. She submitted a self-tape audition after she saw an Instagram call out, and when she got a call back, she flew out to LA twice for screen tests. She beat out a whopping 15,000 other hopefuls for the role of Devi! Ramakrishnan had to defer her acceptance to the theatre programme at Toronto’s York University in order to film the show — but it looks like that decision paid off.
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5. Ramakrishnan is a huge fan of ‘The Office’ and says that meeting Mindy Kaling for the first time was like seeing Kelly Kapoor in the flesh. “It was amazing, ‘cause she is one of my role models,” Ramakrishnan tells Brown Girl Magazine. “I love her work on ‘The Office,’ it’s my favourite TV show and she writes a lot of the episodes and some of, like, the most hilarious ones. So it was really surreal to see Kelly Kapoor in front of me and just like all of her talent.”
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6. The actress is also an outspoken advocate for public education and the right to education. She posted pictures from a protest in Canada against cuts to financial aid. “We may not be able to vote right now, but we are still doing something and that’s what matters,” wrote Ramakrishnan at the time. Her Instagram bio is: “Respect existence or expect resistance.”
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7. She’s a huge fan of the Toronto Raptors. Ramakrishnan calls herself a “legit fan” of the team, who recently won their first NBA championship in their 25 year history. When she was in grade five, she asked her grandmother whether her birthday present could be a Raptors cap with her name engraved on the side, according to her interview with ‘Brown Girl Magazine’. Now that’s love.
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