“Never Have I Ever” is a comedy series created by Mindy Kaling. The series marks a watershed moment for South Asian representation in Hollywood.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the series.
- Never Have I Ever is an American coming of age comedy-drama television series
- Starring Maitreyi Ramakrishnan
- The series is created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher
- The comedy is partially based on Kaling’s childhood in the Boston area
- It premiered on Netflix on April 27, 2020
- The series is about an Indian-American high school student dealing with the death of her father
- The series received positive reviews
- The series has been described as a watershed moment for South Asian representation in Hollywood
- It has been praised for breaking Asian stereotypes
- On July 1, 2020, Netflix renewed the series for a second season
- The new season premiered on July 15, 2021
- The story centers around Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a 15-year-old Indian-American Tamil girl from Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles
- After Devi’s father, Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy) passes away, Devi loses the use of her legs for three months
- After a socially horrible freshman year, she wants to change her social status, but friends, family, and feelings do not make it easy for her
- The following year, she tries to deal with her grief, Indian identity, and school life
- She is, also, struggling with her relationship with her mother, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan), her beautiful cousin, Kamala (Richa Moorjani), her two best friends, Eleanor (Ramona Young) and Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez), her high school crush, Paxton (Darren Barnet), and her nemesis, Ben (Jaren Lewison)
- The series is mostly narrated by professional tennis player John McEnroe for Devi
- One of the episodes narrated by Andy Samberg for Ben
- And another by Gigi Hadid for Paxton
- Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was cast after Mindy Kaling put out an open casting call and received over 15,000 responses
- All the actors met at the first table read and no “chemistry reads” were done between characters
- The series began filming on July 14, 2019, with production wrapping up on October 31, 2019
- Production on season 2 commenced on November 10, 2020 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and wrapped at the end of March 2021
- On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds an approval rating of 97%
- Based on 58 reviews
- With an average rating of 7.82/10
- While the second season holds a 95%
- Based on 21 reviews
- And an average rating of 8.25/10
- The website’s critical consensus reads, “Never Have I Ever’s fresh take on the coming-of-age comedy is hilariously honest, sweetly smart, and likely to have viewers falling head over heels for charming newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan”
- On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100
- Based on 18 critics
- Indicating “generally favorable reviews”
- Prathyush Parasurman of Film Companion wrote, “The criticism many of us had about the first season of this Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher high school drama vis-a-vis Indian representation holds, but the emotional core is otherwise rich with momentum”
- At their Q2 report meeting in July 2020, Netflix reported the series had been viewed by 40 million households since its release
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