'Never Have I Ever' is just the start for Maitreyi Ramakrishnan : It's Been a Minute (2024)

'Never Have I Ever' is just the start for Maitreyi Ramakrishnan : It's Been a Minute (1)

Interview Highlights

On Ramakrishnan's obsession with cosplay

Brittany Luse: It's interesting to me that you're into cosplay. A lot of people do that, I think, because they want to pretend to be someone else for a little while. But that is already your job. I wonder, what is it about cosplay that appeals to you?

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan: I'm just obsessed with my job. [laughs] No, I feel like the characters that I like to play, whether it's Princess Peach [from the Super Mario franchise] or videogame characters like Lisa from Genshin Impact are just characters that maybe traditionally don't look like me, but I still think are dope. And I'm like, I like this character and I just want to dress up as this character, you know? It's so freaking cool when I'm walking around as Princess Peach and then I hear like a little girl gasp and is like, "Oh. A princess." I'm like, "Oh, my God, that is so wholesome."

On diversifying characters and dealing with haters

Luse: Franchises like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones – all of those projects have a legacy of ultra-white casts. Things have been changing more recently, and these shows and films have been facing backlash from some audiences for having more diverse casts. And I wonder, for you, being someone who reimagines characters not just in cosplay – soon you're going to be playing the character of Lizzie Bennet from Pride and Prejudice in the Netherfield Girls for Netflix – how do you react to that backlash?

Ramakrishnan: First of all, social media so skewed. Let's first acknowledge that... People that are like, "Why is Little Mermaid Black?" Don't even get me started. I hate that people have been calling it a controversy. I'm like, no, no, there's no controversy. This is just hating and trolling. She is doing nothing controversial by taking on a fictional freaking mermaid.

I like to think that those negative people are just really loud and obnoxious. I mean, my dream role is Rapunzel. That is my dream role as a brown girl that has had her grandma put coconut oil in her hair since she was like a child. That's my dream, and I'm going to do whatever it takes for me to achieve that. I'm not going to let some random troll on social media tell me, "Rapunzel's actually of German origin, so it technically does not make sense to the film." South Asian people exist in Germany. Just a fun fact. I have cousins in Germany. Let me introduce you to them. Thank you and goodnight.

Luse: I wonder, though, you bring up haters. How do you deal with them?

Ramakrishnan: It's hard. It's so hard. The haters that really get to me are the ones that truly have no rhyme or reason. Like, the ones that truly are just like, "Oh, she's so annoying." Those comments really suck, because I want to know why, what is it about me that is annoying? Tell me.

And then you have to remind yourself, no, they don't know you. And the best and pretty much only way to truly convince yourself that these random trolls out there on the interwebs don't know you, is by knowing who you are yourself. I can't say, "Random Hater 706 doesn't know me," if I don't know who I am myself. You know?

On seeing herself as the hero

Luse: This series was so special to me because I love teen dramas, and the genre has mostly sidelined people of color as supporting characters. But you're the lead. And part of the reason why I and so many other grown women of color – I'm talking like, girl, you got fans in their 30s and 40s. Know that. We love your show because it feels like something we never got to have when we were teens. But you're a bit younger than me, and you grew up with a slightly different media landscape than I did. So I wonder, before you were cast in this role, did you ever think a show like yours would exist?

Ramakrishnan: Only after Never Have I Ever came out and I would be asked "When did you see yourself onscreen?" That was when I realized I didn't see myself on screen, because I would say like, "Oh, I actually don't have someone." Because I always looked up to like, Harry Potter's Hermione Granger. That was my character, you know? But I realized how normalized I was to the fact that I didn't have a character like me... I didn't want to be the sidekick. I didn't want to be the one that had to, like, just be funny, off to the side, come in every few scenes. I wanted to be the main hero.

Luse: And this is what you are now.

On cutting across genres

Luse: Now that filming Never Have I Ever has ended, you're looking to what's next. You mentioned playing Rapunzel, which I think is a fantastic idea. But even beyond Rapunzel, what is your wildest dream role that you can see yourself playing?

Ramakrishnan. Man. I thought Rapunzel was pretty wild. That's really the dream. But in my ideal world, by the end of it all, I [want to be able to] look back and see a bunch of different characters, a bunch of different personalities, in a bunch of different genres. Like, I want to find my thriller movie. I want to find my epic fantasy. I want to find my cool action car chase sequence. I want a car chase sequence, man. I do.

Luse: Look, we're overdue for a Speed remake. I'm seeing you driving the bus.

Ramakrishnan: Dude, give me the bus. Give me the bus! No, but I just want to take up all the different genres so that one day people can say, "Maitreyi Ramakrishnan can do it all," you know? I don't want to diminish my light because people are like, "Oh, you can't take up space in this genre. There's no place for you here."

Hopefully other brown girls rise up too. But I want to make sure that I also get to play roles so that we all can just keep acting. I'm not going to stop acting just to make room for somebody else. Because that's where they get you, this myth that there can only be one.

Luse: One person.

Ramakrishnan. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not going to diminish how much success Never Have I Ever has gotten. But that was just my breakout role. I'm not going to stop at my breakout role because there's already been too much of me around. It's just means I did a damn good job at my first job. I'm going to do a damn good job on my second too.

This episode of 'It's Been a Minute' was produced by Barton Girdwood. It was edited by Jessica Mendoza and Jessica Placzek. You can follow us on Twitter @npritsbeenamin and email us at ibam@npr.org.