Everyone thinks it’s naughty, harmless fun.
She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets. Sultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant s In this game, even winning can be deadly.Īmy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it-teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it-teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. I have no idea, it probably sucks.In this game, even winning can be deadly. And that felt really kind of natural to her personality. This is a character whose ego is so caught up in the things she hasn’t done yet, hasn’t been exposed to yet. I’m so bad at naming things, which is why my show was called “The Mindy Project.” This is actually something Lang, my co-creator, came up with. What was the thinking behind “Never Have I Ever”? And if I don’t see it, maybe I have to create something. I’d love to tell a story about a young queer woman. In some Indian communities there’s still a stigma attached to coming out. I feel like that is almost never talked about. To me it would be great if there is a more L.G.B.T.Q. If this show does well, hopefully, and it just feels more normal to see Indian people on things, then there will hopefully be more shows greenlit.
So it’s one of the biggest things I care about now as an artist.įor you as a creator then, what is the next frontier for South Asian representation?įrom watching several hundred of the auditions, I saw the hunger that I kind of hoped that was there. And they’re the ones that are going to be the toughest on me. Those people who watch the show, particularly young Indian-American women, are the people that I want to like it the most. I’m still trying to figure out a way to accept that criticism. What I realized is that because we don’t have a lot of different shows depicting Hindu teenagers praying, it offends people when it’s not exactly the way that it was for them. I’ve been working really hard and it means a lot to my parents.” I remember when the teaser trailer came out and Devi’s praying, and she says, “Hey, gods, it’s me Devi Vishwakumar” and there was a comment on Twitter saying, “Oh, great that is totally not how Hindu girls talk.” And I remember being incensed because when my mom used to make us pray before we took the SATs, or before we got on a plane, and I didn’t know all the different names of the gods because no one had taught me, I was just like: “Hey, gods. So when you try to play that character and you’re Indian, and you’re the only Indian character people have, it’s within their right to say: “How dare you do that to us? We have no representation.”ĭo you still face that kind of criticism? I come from comedy, where the funniest characters are the flawed ones, like Michael Scott, and my training was for writing those characters. That really resonated with me, because I thought that was really smart of him in a way that I have not been smart.
Someone asked him why he doesn’t play villains more often, and he said something like: There’s just so few of us, and I mean so much to my community that I feel like I can’t do that in this lifetime. What was that like for you? Do you feel you’ve grown from it?ĭenzel Washington once said something that always stuck with me. You’ve been at the forefront of South Asian representation for a long time, but there’s been some criticism that some of your early roles were stereotypical. If you’re someone who has a sense of humor in your 20s and 30s, it most likely means that you had a very painful adolescence, right? More even than writing about teenagers, writing about the Indian-American experience growing up was really fascinating to me. I’ll always love romantic comedies, and I don’t see a world where I don’t revisit that genre again. It seems like you were usually in a rom-com space with your earlier work.