Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the breakout star of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever shares with Tatler about the show’s second season, who she has the best chemistry with, and how much she relates to her role as Devi
Coming-of-age teen comedy hit, Never Have I Ever, is back for a second season on July 15. The Netflix series was viewed by 40 million households since its release and has been a watershed moment for South Asian representation on screen.
This season, we follow Indian American teenager Devi, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, as she continues to deal with the everyday pressures of high school and drama at home while also navigating uncharted waters in the love department.
Ahead of the second season, Tatler sits down with breakout star Ramakrishnan to find out what she’s excited about, who she has the best chemistry with and how much she relates to her role as Devi.
Can you tell us more about season two, what you’re excited about, and what should the audience be excited about?
There’s a lot that happens in season two—a lot that I can’t possibly say all in one sentence. But I will say, it’s all the drama and comedy that you loved about season one but to the exponent of 10.
I’m so excited for the fans to see the characters that fans already know, meet these new characters that we don’t know and see how that shows different sides and personalities to the audience. We’ve got Aneesa (Megan Suri) boiling Devi, we got Malcolm (Tyler Alvarez) with all the other kids and we also got Dr Jackson. With Devi’s mom, we got the rival dermatologist [Dr Chris Jackson, played by Common].
Which cast member do you have the best chemistry with?
If I say any one of them, I think the rest are going to stab me. I guarantee you that the person I pick will not save me. But I truly do love working with all of them because they all give me something different which is really nice—whether it’s a scene with Darren [Barnett, who plays Paxton Hall-Yoshida] and myself where we’re supposed to be like, “Oh my god, will-they-won’t-they tension”, and we just have such a fun time joking around. Or when it’s Jaren [Lewison, who plays Ben Gross] and myself where Ben and Devi would rival it out, we'd have fun with that.
But if I have to give you an answer since I won’t cop out of this and say all of them are my favourite kids then I have to say, I truly do love doing scenes with Ramona [Young] and Lee [Rodriguez]—who play Eleanor and Fabiola—because we’re not acting like friends. A lot of people when you meet them, as an actor or fellow cast member, it’s like, “yeah, you guys play as best friends! You have to act as if you’ve known each other for years but with these two, I feel like I’ve known these guys for years and we have such a ball, it’s such a great time.
Speaking of Fabiola and Eleanor, will we get to see more friendship moments between the three of you or see more of their own storylines that we’ve seen hints of in the past season?
Yes, I can talk about this for so long! You will a lot more of the UN (United Nations), the good ol’ trio. I'm really passionate about the whole friendship because we rarely ever see female friendships that are positive, especially young female friendships. That’s one of my favourite things that we get to show our audience, especially the younger audience because it’s so important.
We will see a lot more UN scenes which is really nice but they have their own stories this season which is really cool. They go through their own struggles for sure and the thing is with these standalone stories, they still go off with each other. At the end of the day, it’s this trio of best friends that tell each other everything and that they’re still up in each other lives.
