Jaren Lewison

Jaren Lewison grew up in Dallas, Texas in a Jewish family. He has one sister named Mikayla.[1] For 14 years he attended Levine Academy, a Conservative Jewish day school in Dallas[2] where his mother teaches kindergarten but graduated in 2019 from Pearce High School in Richardson, Texas.[3] In high school, he was captain of the varsity football team and was a varsity powerlifter.[4] He also did theater. As a senior, he portrayed William Shakespeare in his school's adaptation of the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love, and the production was chosen to perform at the 2019 International Thespian Festival.[1][5][6]

In 2019, he began attending college at the University of Southern California, where he is majoring in psychology with minors in forensics and criminology.[3] He filmed Never Have I Ever while being a full-time student at USC.

Lewison began acting at 5 years old, when his after-care had a theatre group come who connected him with representation. After giving his name to a Dallas film and TV agent, he got his first role as Joshua on Barney & Friends, whom he played in various episodes and videos from 2008 to 2011.[3][7] He has acted in various TV series, TV movies, and films since. Some of these roles included playing Adam Sandler's son in the 2014 film, Men, Women & Children.[3] He also played the younger version of the main character Hoagie, whom Ed Helms portrayed, in the 2018 comedy film Tag.[8]

His largest role to date was on the main cast as Ben Gross in Mindy Kaling's 2020 Netflix show, Never Have I Ever.[9]