The star of Mindy Kaling’s acclaimed Netflix series opens up about self-esteem, being bicultural in America, and trying
to make it in Bollywood

When Mindy Kaling put out an open casting call for three &ldquo;desi ladies&rdquo; to play the leads in Netflix&rsquo;s Never Have I Ever, Richa Moorjani jumped at the opportunity.

Beating out around 15,000 applicants, Moorjani (who also had a small role in Kaling&rsquo;s The Mindy Project) landed the role of Kamala, an ambitious 20-something&nbsp;who moves from India to Southern California to pursue a PhD from Caltech. &ldquo;This is by far the most exciting project I&rsquo;ve been a part of,&rdquo; Moorjani says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s something&nbsp;of a dream project for me.&rdquo;

The show follows 15-year-old Devi Vishwakumar, a straight-A student who vows to shed her nerd status during her sophomore year of high school.&nbsp;The easiest way to do that, she decides, is to find a boyfriend.&nbsp;So Devi sets her sights on the heartthrob of Sherman Oaks High School, Paxton Hall-Yoshida. The results are equally endearing and hilarious, while upending many a rom-com trope.

Kamala, who is living with Devi and her mum while she&rsquo;s in school, is expected to follow through with an arranged marriage. Although she is&nbsp;less than enthused about the idea, Kamala often finds it difficult to speak up. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s always wanting to please the people around her,&rdquo; says Moorjani. &ldquo;I can relate to that because I think I have the disease to please too.&rdquo;

As a first-generation American who grew up in California, Moorjani can relate to Kamala&rsquo;s story in more ways than one. We caught up with the actor on all things Never Have I Ever, her stint in Bollywood, and struggling to find her place in high school.

Can you describe what the show&rsquo;s success has felt like to you?

When I booked the role, I knew it was something unique and special and important, not just to me as a South Asian actor, but also&nbsp;to a lot of people. That being said, I had no way of knowing that the response we&rsquo;ve received would be on such a big scale. Before the show even came out, for example&nbsp;when the trailer was released, we had so much of a response&nbsp;and people were so excited about it. That was something I did not anticipate, and I&rsquo;m super grateful that it&rsquo;s been received well.

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Tell us a bit about your character Kamala.

Kamala comes from India but she lives [in the USA]. She&#39;s navigating her newly-found American identity, and also trying to balance the traditional values of where she comes from with the modern values of where she&rsquo;s living now. She&#39;s brilliant &mdash; she&#39;s getting her PhD! But though she proves to be&nbsp;independent and strong and ambitious, moving halfway across the world to pursue something, she is, like many young women and South Asian women, someone who&nbsp;finds it hard to act on what she wants, because she&rsquo;s torn between that and wanting to meet the expectations of her family.

How did you get into acting?

I have basically been involved in the arts my entire life. I started dancing when I was five, and I come from a musical family, so I started doing plays in school. In college I minored in theatre and dance, and I moved to LA right after, which was eight&nbsp;years ago. Since then I&rsquo;ve been in LA, and I also went to Mumbai for a couple of years to pursue acting there.

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What was that like?

It&rsquo;s hard to describe. It was terrifying because I didn&rsquo;t know anyone when I moved&nbsp;there. It was just this burning desire and a&nbsp;lifelong dream that I&rsquo;ve always wanted to explore &mdash; to work in Indian cinema and Bollywood. I felt like I needed to do it, even though I didn&rsquo;t know anything about it, so I packed my bags and put my stuff in LA in storage.

I didn&rsquo;t know how long I was going to spend there, I just had to go. When I got [to Mumbai], I took an acting course for a few months to help me build a network, make friends, and learn about the audition process.&nbsp;

They considered me an &quot;NRI&quot;, which stands for non-resident Indian, and unfortunately as an NRI, we get stereotyped a lot. So it&rsquo;s interesting, because sometimes I feel like an outsider&nbsp;here [in the US], but then when I go to the country where I&#39;m&nbsp;from, I feel like an outsider there too.

That&rsquo;s similar to what Devi goes through in&nbsp;Never Have I Ever, being pulled between her family&rsquo;s culture and the Western environment she grew up in. Did you go through a similar experience when you were younger?

Absolutely. I think everyone who is a bicultural person in this country feels that, whether you&rsquo;re South Asian or not. Navigating the culture of your family and the American way of life can sometimes be a struggle, and I think the media plays&nbsp;a big role in shaping the way we see ourselves. Because there was virtually no representation [of my culture in mainstream media] when I was in high school, it was harder back then for someone like me to navigate my cultural identity.

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&nbsp;What kinds of experiences did you have at the time where you maybe felt out of place?

A lot of it had to do with my passion for acting and for dance. I was really insecure growing up. The main training I have is in Indian classical dance &mdash; it&rsquo;s called Kathak &mdash; and because I was in a lot of different environments that included dance and acting, I was made to feel like an outsider a lot of the time.&nbsp;

I remember one time, in high school, I volunteered to choreograph some drama production that we had for our class. There was a girl who was a ballet dancer, and she was considered one of the best dancers at our school. The word&nbsp;got back to me that behind my back she had said, &quot;Indian dancing isn&rsquo;t real dancing, so I don&rsquo;t know why they asked Richa to do it.&quot;&nbsp;Little things like that had such a profound&nbsp;impact on my confidence, as an artist and as a person.

How do you think a show like&nbsp;Never Have I Ever&nbsp;would have affected you if it were around while you were growing up?

I think it would have been really helpful for my self-esteem. Just having someone who I&nbsp; could relate&nbsp;to on a cultural level, and it being cool and being normalised, I think it would have made [me feel like] I wasn&rsquo;t alone in my experiences.

That&rsquo;s the kind of messages that I&rsquo;ve been getting from people &mdash; whether they&rsquo;re in high school, or my age, or older &mdash; telling me about how they&rsquo;re reflecting on their high school experience&nbsp;while watching this show, and how it&rsquo;s made them feel like their experiences weren&rsquo;t isolated. I think that&rsquo;s something we all want to feel, like we&rsquo;re not alone.

Richa Moorjani On 'Never Have I Ever' And Fitting In During High School

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