Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

Ramakrishnan was born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario. While she is of Tamil descent from Sri Lanka, with her family coming to Canada as refugees due to the civil war in Sri Lanka, Maitreyi has said that she identifies as Tamil Canadian and not Sri Lankan due to the war's impact on Sri Lankan Tamil civilians.[1][2][3] She began acting in school plays in Grade 10 and graduated from Meadowvale Secondary School.[4] She made the decision to pursue an acting career in her last year at Meadowvale and got the role in Never Have I Ever less than a year after.[1] She deferred her acceptance to the theatre program at York University in Toronto, which she had initially planned to attend the fall after she graduated high school, so she could shoot Never Have I Ever in Los Angeles.[5]

Ramakrishnan portrays Devi Vishwakumar, the lead role, in the Netflix series Never Have I Ever.[6][4] In 2019, she was chosen by Mindy Kaling out of 15,000 candidates that applied for an open casting call for the show.[7][8] Ramakrishnan created her audition tape at a local library, using her mother's camera, eventually being asked to send four more videos, before having a screen test in Los Angeles and being offered the role.[9] Ramakrishnan was 17 at the time of her casting and had not yet held a job or acted professionally.[9] Her casting received significant media attention,[10] especially in Canada,[11][12][13] both due to the nature of the open casting call and for her Tamil Canadian identity.[14][15][16]

In 2019, Today named her one of eighteen "Groundbreakers", a list of girls who were breaking down barriers and changing the world.[17][18] Her performance in the show received positive reviews,[19] with Variety saying it was a "breakout performance".[20][21]

In 2020, she narrated the Children's Programming portion of the 8th Canadian Screen Awards.[22]

• South Asian Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area

• Maitreyi Ramakrishnan at IMDb