(April 20, 2022) Actors of South Asian descent haven’t always been a staple in Hollywood. Not unless the role requires the manager of a 7-Eleven, a doctor, or a young Indian being forced into an arranged marriage. Stereotypes ruled, even as actors like Naveen Andrews, Priyanka Chopra, Freida Pinto, Dev Patel and Anupam Kher landed substantial roles. Not anymore. OTT platforms have given rise to a line of young, bold actors who aren’t afraid to break the rules, refuse to be typecast and want to create a new mould for South Asian talent. Leading the charge are Ashley Simone, who is the leading lady in Netflix’s superhit show, Bridgerton, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, star of Never Have I Ever and Rahul Kohli, from The Haunting of Bly Manor.
Ashley Simone
She went from being fairly successful to worldwide stardom almost overnight. The dusky-skinned Simone Ashley (nee Simone Ashwini Pillai) shot to fame when she was cast as the lead in Season 2 of Bridgerton, the immensely popular Netflix series. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel described it as the “most popular show ever on Netflix, which means it’s probably the most popular show ever.”
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The 27-year-old actress was already a familiar face – especially to fans of the Netflix original, Sex Education, which gained something of a global cult following. She was, she told Kimmel, filming a movie when she got the news. “I was in my trailer when I got a call saying, ‘You can’t tell anyone but you’ve got the role’.” At that moment, she was called out to set, so she put her phone on flight mode and stepped outside, where her colleagues couldn’t stop talking having watched Bridgerton Season 1 over the weekend. They were all wondering what Season 2 would hold but Simone couldn’t say a word.
Born to Indian Tamil parents Latha and Gunasekharan Pillai in Camberley, Surrey, Ashey grew up in a household of academics. She was the only one, she has said, in multiple interviews, with an inclination towards the arts. This was a cause of worry for her parents but she stayed with her creative inclinations, singing classical music and opera and playing the piano. The family was supportive, however and moved to Beaconsfield so Ashley could attend Redroofs Theatre School in Maidenhead before going on to train in acting at Arts Educational School in London.
Ashley left home when she was 16 and not long after, headed to LA. In 2018, she made her feature film debut in Boogie Man and a year later, landed the role of Olivia Hanan in Sex Education. In 2020, she auditioned for Bridgerton and was announced as the leading lady in February 2021. She stars as Kate, opposite Jonathan Bailey as Anthony in the second series of the romance period drama.
Fame isn’t all fun and games to Ashley. While she enjoys being able to rub shoulders with the likes of Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, she is using her stardom to bring awareness about ‘colourism’ in the industry. Actors, she believes, continue to be “typecast” and “looked over because of the colour of their skin.”
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan
Over 15,000 actors lined up to bag the lead role in Mindy Kaling’s teen series Never Have I Ever. In the end, it went to 18-year-old Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, a high school teen from Ontario, who made the audition tape at a local library, using her mother’s camera. She was asked to send four more videos, called in for a screen test and given the role. Although she had acted at Meadowvale Secondary School, where she studied and was all set to head off for a theatre programme at York University, she had not acted professionally at the time.
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She plays Devi Vishwakumar, an Indian-American teenager grappling with the sudden death of her father, coming to terms with a strict mother and attempting to navigate the ups and downs of being a teenager in America. Or rather, being an Indian teenager in America.
Maitreyi is a second generation Canadian born and raised in Ontario. Technically, her parents immigrated as Sri Lankan refugees but Maitreyi herself prefers to identify as Tamil Canadian, not Sri Lankan.
In 2019, Today named her one of 18 groundbreakers, – a list of girls who were breaking barriers and changing the world. In 2020, she took part in the live read series Acting for a Cause, playing Olivia in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to raise money for a local hospital in Chicago during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She is all set to star in the Netflix romantic comedy film, The Netherfield Girls, a contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Poorna Jagannathan
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Remember the Imran Khan, Vir Das starrer Delhi Belly? And the fiery young, curly-haired journalist who appeared on screen with the leads? That’s Poorna Jagannathan, who has long since shed that bohemian appeal and moved on to far more versatile roles – she recently made quite a splash as Nalini Vishwakumar in Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever. Poorna Jagannathan’s acting career has been prolific ever since.
She co-conceived, produced and acted in the play, Nirbhaya, written and directed by Yael Farber, which won the 2013 Amnesty International Award. She was a series regular in Netflix’s psychological thriller series Gypsy a recurring in Defending Jacob and has made appearances on TV shows like Big Little Lies, Better Call Saul and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Jagannathan made her debut in 2004 both in film (She Hate Me) and television (Law & Order).
Rahul Kohli
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Kohli won hearts when he appeared as the resident chef Owen Sharma, on Netflix’s horror series, The Haunting of Bly Manor in 2020. “I knew Bly would be big,” he told Vogue and sure enough, it became one of the most-watched shows of the year. He played a supporting role but that was enough to catapult him to instant fame. “I read and recorded with my mum in London,” Kohli told the media, about his role in Bly Manor. He promised her a handbag of her choice when he got the role and hopefully, she got the Louis Vuitton she wanted.
Kohli is a crusader against racial stereotypes and says he rejects a lot of scripts in order to do so. He won’t jump at a role that has him working in a 7-eleven, or rejecting an arranged marriage.
Kohli was born in England to Indian immigrant parents and has only visited India once. He’s a third-generation Indian and admits that he calls England “home.”
Sendhil Ramamurthy
He’s best known for his role on NBC’s Heroes, where he played the dashing genetics professor, Mohinder Suresh, and also as supervillain Dr Ramsey Rosso on the hit CW superhero series The Flash. He is also a recurring character in Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever.
Ramamurthy, who is Kannadiga by descent, was, like most South Indian boys, a pre-med major at Tufts University in Boston.
Ramamurthy’s parents are both doctors from Bengaluru and his sister, he said in an interview, is a psychiatrist. He started out following the family line but happened to sign up for an “intro to Acting” in his graduation year at Tufts University. He took it simply because he needed an arts credit but ended up in the lead role of a college production of “Our Country’s Good.”
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After a couple of more plays, he knew there was no looking back. Instead, he followed his passion for acting, however, all the way to London, where he studied at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, whose alumni include Matthew Goode and Terrence Stamp.
He made his debut with NBC’s Heroes, taking on a role that was originally written for a 55-year-old from the University of Madras. He landed it, however (despite being nothing like a stuffy fifty-something academic).
He has also appeared in the eighth and ninth season of The Office and in CW’s Beauty and the Beast.
He is married to actress Olga Sosnovska. The couple have two daughters and live in New York.
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