“We don’t care to put the blame on anybody or any other generation….we just recognize there’s a problem and that we need to fix it.”Īnd though she shares Devi’s fire and fighting spirit, she says she’s very different from her character in at least one way: the boy obsession. When there’s a problem, according to Ramakrishnan, Gen-Z doesn’t waste time pointing fingers. When she was a senior in high school, she led a student walkout with 400 other students to stand up against cuts to public education. Much like her character’s penchant for addressing injustices, Ramakrishnan believes that her generation plays a crucial role in advocating for change when it comes to pressing social issues today. It’s not only how you show yourself to the rest of the world, but also how you accept yourself.” “You’re figuring out where you fit within your own culture, and identity is so important, whether it’s your culture, your sexuality, anything. “I wish I had a show like this growing up,” says Ramakrishnan. Devi is told she doesn’t stand a good chance of getting into a top school because she’s just “another Indian try-hard,” but she also doesn’t feel like herself wearing traditional Indian clothes and taking part in the traditions that some of the other Indian kids embrace. The show also explores a common aspect of the first-generation struggle: being too assimilated to fit in with the Indian community, but too Indian to fit in elsewhere. “I thought that was so cool to see somebody that has the same skin color and background as me.” ![]() That was the first time I ever saw her, but I really became a fan of her when I found out that she wrote so many of the episodes and jokes,” Ramakrishnan says of Kaling’s time on The Office, which ran from 2005 to 2013. “I remember when Mindy was on TV as Kelly Kapoor. To the young actor, Kaling was an early idol. “From then on, I honestly auditioned for every single play or musical that I could in my high school,” she says. Ramakrishnan, now 18, first started acting at 15, when she performed in a school production of Footloose. (Though somewhat disappointingly not mentioned in the show, Ramakrishnan tells me that she loved Maggi noodles, a staple in many Indian kids’ diets as a reliable after-school snack.) She has an Indian name (which becomes a point of ridicule when her nemesis insists on calling her “David”), prays to Hindu gods and eats dosas with her family. The show manages all this without erasing Devi’s Indian heritage. Her character doesn’t just break the stereotype of the rule-abiding Indian girl, it also breaks the stereotypes of the brainless, boy-crazed valley girl, the undesirable nerd and more. She attends the Hindu festival Ganesh Puja, but regularly gets called into the principal’s office at school. She’s in the school orchestra, but sneaks out to go to parties. She’s at the top of her class, with hopes of attending Princeton University, but also boy crazy. The character Long Duk Dong, played by Gedde Watanabe in the 1984 Hughes film Sixteen Candles, for example, is an especially memorable example of the trope of the socially inept, sexually undesirable Asian man.īut Devi’s character offers a far more nuanced depiction of what it means to be a young girl of color than audiences are accustomed to seeing onscreen. ![]() And the few roles given to actors of color often reduce characters to a tired, stereotypical representation of their race. The movies and shows that predominantly make up the genre, from ’80s John Hughes classics like The Breakfast Club to hit shows like Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls, are overwhelmingly white. Though the series has every ingredient for a typical teen drama-sex (or, in Devi’s case, aspirations to have sex), “no-parents parties,” a hunky jock love interest-it is anything but. It’s also narrated by former tennis champion John McEnroe (seems random, yes-but more on that below). ![]() Inspired by Kaling’s own childhood, the show takes viewers through the challenges, both mundane and weighty, that come with being a young girl of color in high school today. Devi, a fiery, overachieving first-generation Indian American growing up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, is dealing with the recent loss of her father, a difficult-to-impress mother, friend troubles and an overwhelming crush on the school heartthrob, all while worrying about her prospects of getting into her dream university. The comedy, which premieres with 10 episodes on Netflix today, follows the turbulent teenage life of Ramakrishnan’s character Devi Vishwakumar.
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