‘Never Have I Ever’ … Seen a Show that So Resembles My Asian American High School

While I rarely saw myself represented in film or television growing up, I had the privilege of attending a Southern Californian high school surrounded by people that looked like me. My friends and crushes at Whitney High in Cerritos were children of immigrants from countries like India, Korea, Sri-Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. And while I loved teen movies like Pretty in Pink and Clueless, none resembled my predominantly Asian American high school. For youth of color that don’t see themselves represented on TV or represented in demeaning ways, research finds that their self esteems can suffer. I had to wait a quarter of a century before seeing my younger self reflected in Never Have I Ever, a Netflix show about a South Asian American teen from the fictional Sherman Oaks High school.

Co-created by Mindy Kaling and based on her youth, Never Have I Ever is the best representation of my Asian American teen life to date. I fully connected to Devi Vishwakumar (played by Canadian-Tamil actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as an Asian American overachiever who desperately wanted to be popular and fell too easily in love. As a teen who also coped with big feelings and family trauma, I saw myself in Devi’s ups and downs in navigating her father’s death. Thanks to Devi’s therapy sessions with Dr. Ryan (played by Niecy Nash), I now realize that having multiple crushes was also my way of escaping hardships at home.

Prior to Never Have I Ever, I only ever saw Asian American teens as tokens on screen. From “Long Duk Dong” in Sixteen Candles to “Summer” in Clueless, Asian characters were either too stereotyped or too non-consequential for me to relate. Even in the rare film or show led by an Asian American teen like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lana Condor’s “Lara Jean Covey” was one of the very few Asians at her school. Asians remain underrepresented on digital scripted shows on platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, making up only 2.8 percent of leads. This is less than half of the actual Asian American population (approximately 6 percent) in the United States.

Consequently, Never Have I Ever stands out with its over 50 percent BIPOC cast, most of whom are Asian. Besides her Asian family members, Devi also has a multicultural cadre of friends and love interests that feature Asian American characters like Eleanor Wong (played by Ramona Young), Aneesa Qureshi (played by Megan Suri), Paxton Hall-Yoshida (played by Darren Barnet), Des (played by Anirudh Pisharody), and Addison (played by Terry Hu). In season 3, Devi’s Afro-Latina friend Fabiola Torres (played by Lee Rodriguez) dates both Aneesa and a new nonbinary character, Addison. Throughout the seasons, Devi’s older cousin, Kamala (played by Richa Moorjani) cycles through multiple Asian love interests including Steve (played by Eddie Liu), Prashant (played by Rushi Kota), and Manish Kulkarni (played by Utkarsh Ambudkar). By having Asian American characters of different ethnicities and identities, the show explodes stereotypes. Devi may be a nerd but she’s also boy-crazy and savagely funny. Eleanor is a dramatic theater diva. Aneesa is a star soccer player who overcomes an eating disorder. Paxton Hall-Yoshida is a popular hottie who implores his fellow graduating class in a speech to “defy other people’s expectation of you and don’t ever let a label define you.” The show even addresses internalized stereotypes with Des accusing Devi as “one of those Indian girls who only likes white guys and thinks all Indian dudes are just computer geeks” (spoiler, Devi ends up acknowledging/overcoming her bias and dates Des). These diverse portraits of Asian Americans (spoiler, we’re not all the same) provide a snapshot of the 22 million Asian Americans who trace their roots to more than 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, each with unique histories, cultures, languages and other characteristics.

As one of the few Asian American-centered streaming shows, Never Have I Ever made the top ten most popular digital scripted shows among Asian households. But Asian households are not the only ones tuning in. Within 24 hours of Season 3 dropping on Netflix, the show became the site’s number one watched television show in the United States. At the packed Los Angeles premiere of Season 3 of the show on August 11th, the fan screams were loudest for all the Asian cast members with several folks shouting out “I love you, Mindy Kaling!” The popularity of a show about an overachieving Asian American girl nerd created by an Asian American woman commanding such a huge fanbase is my teenage dream come true.

Nancy Wang Yuen is a sociologist and film critic of the people. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.