Megan Suri is cagey about revealing her current favorite movies. She’s comfortable naming childhood go-tos, like Shrek, and rattles off the Bollywood classics Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham and Mohabbatein, but as we talk over coffee on a rainy LA afternoon, she’s invested in keeping some things for herself. “[That’s a] vulnerable thing,” she says, choosing not to name any one title in particular. “That’s letting people into who you really are.”
Part of Suri's reluctance comes from her relationship with fame. She thought her career would blow up at age 13. It was 2010, the year she made her Hollywood debut in the first volume of Garry Marshall’s holiday-set trilogy, Valentine’s Day, alongside Taylor Swift, Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Garner. Suri was just nine when she nabbed that role, wowing the late Marshall by convincingly choking him during the audition. “I actually did choke him,” she recalls, amazed by the memory. “I didn’t know!”
But it would be years before she became a more recognizable name and face — after she was cast, in 2021, as the recurring character Aneesa on Never Have I Ever. Now, at 24 years old, Suri is thankful for that slowed trajectory to being a public figure. “Had it happened [when I was a teenager], I would have been a menace,” says the Teen Vogue New Hollywood 2024 honoree. “People equate being famous to being important, and that's just not true.”
Suri is also thankful to have missed the TikTok craze, where every kid is vying to be famous, because she realizes that, more often than not, fame negatively affects one’s sense of reality. Her focus is on cultivating relationships with people who keep her planted in reality and living a normal life beyond the trappings of the entertainment industry. “You don’t have control over fame," she says, "you only have control over how you internally validate yourself in a healthy way.”
Still, fame isn’t all bad, even if Suri doesn’t always know what to do with it. On her way into the Los Feliz cafe where we meet, a fan stops to say they love her work. Suri is gracious to the stranger, but she tells me she still feels imposter syndrome, more than a decade into her career. “I fangirl people all the time, so it’s very bizarre for me to think that someone might feel that about me,” she reasons, adding that today's compliment from a fan was especially uplifting after an unnerving audition earlier. “How lucky am I that I can have a sh*tty day and it can be turned upside down because someone watched something that I loved being part of?”
The high she gets from performing has been part of Suri's life for as long as she can remember. The Southern California native started acting in elementary school, after performing a Bollywood dance number set to “Dil Na Diya,” from the Hrithik Roshan film Krrish, at her third-grade talent show. Suri's father immediately clocked her enthusiasm during that short performance, which also featured an acting interlude, and he promptly enrolled her in the John Robert Powers acting academy. Her first role out of the course was in that “tiny thing called Valentine’s Day,” as Rani, a student in Garner’s character’s class.
Though Suri didn’t skyrocket to stardom, her complicated relationship — and at times, straight-up aversion — to fame is, in part, why she’s minimally on social media. The Indian American actor has only 15 grid posts on her Instagram, and rarely posts updates to her IG Story. She’s openly wary of the validation that it all provides, believing “likes” and “follows” only feed the people-pleasing nature in all actors.
“Glamour is so appealing and enticing, but none of it is as gratifying as being on set,” the Gen Z star says. Suri is suspicious of what being chronically online can do to one’s psyche, likening social media stardom to popularity at school: a chase for something that ultimately doesn’t mean that much.
The other part of why she's not often on social media? “When I’m not working, I have a very mundane, boring life,” Suri insists. “I truly have nothing interesting enough to share that I’m like, ‘You guys need to see this.’”
Despite Suri’s public-facing career, her day-to-day life is as normal as an entertainer’s can be. She lives with her close-knit family (including two brothers who work in the family trucking business, a sister who is a nurse, and a dog) in Downey, California, where she grew up, about half an hour from the entertainment industry’s epicenter of Los Angeles. Suri’s path to a creative career was championed, not discouraged, by her immigrant parents. A middle child, Suri's the only one in her family with entertainment ambitions — “I’m the only emotionally distressed one,” she jokes — which helps her keep things in perspective.
Suri contends that she’s “just not that interesting,” but it’s her grounded, stable, supportive life that gives her the courage and desire to experiment with the roles she takes on; it drives the responsibility she feels for showing varied depictions of the larger South Asian diaspora. “I'm really interested in playing different characters…. not the same role over and over again,” she says, specifically referencing how many would call the parental support she's had atypical for second-generation kids. “South Asians are all so complex, and I want to stray from the stereotypical narrative that we may have about our families.”
Suri’s roles have been consistent with this desire. After Valentine’s Day, she later starred in the Fresh Off the Boat back-door pilot, Magic Motor Inn, that would have centered on an Indian family that owns a motel had it received a series order. In 2021, she began her stint as Aneesa on Never Have I Ever, playing a cool new Muslim girl at school who experiences an eating disorder, is a star athlete, and later realizes she’s bisexual. On Poker Face, she portrayed a goth employee at a convenience store, and her first leading role came in the 2023 Hindu mythology-inspired horror movie It Lives Inside, directed by Bishal Dutta.
In It Lives Inside, Suri's character, Samidha, feels cultural discomfort and eventual acceptance, which many diasporic kids may relate to — and it's what drew Suri to the part. She connected to the familiar feelings of displacement, alienation, and forced assimilation in America, which echoed her own experience of returning to California after a two-year stint in India during her youth.
Also, Suri has always been a horror fan, and the centering of a brown face in that genre felt revolutionary to her because it was not something she had seen in her favorites of those films growing up. “The biggest shift from the roles I used to audition for and now is the level of complexity,” she says. “I want a lot of versatility in the characters that I’m playing.”
For Suri, that complexity means she will walk away from roles that don’t directly align with her career ethos — something she wasn’t able to do when I talked with her just three years ago. “I appreciate the ability to not have to say yes to everything that comes my way and being okay with that,” she says of representing the brown diaspora now, with more ground under her feet. “Even if that means being okay with not working for a minute, I'd rather do that than sacrifice the integrity of the work I want to put out now.”
In the recent past, Suri has specifically avoided roles that show stereotypical South Asian parents, as that doesn’t reflect her personal experience and plays into tired cliches. It Lives Inside uses the mother character’s piety as the key to unlocking the central mystery, instead of simply depicting a strict immigrant mom.
Even though Suri's career has progressed to the point where she is making deliberate choices, she says she still gets nervous about auditions; the audition from earlier today is no exception. She puts a lot of pressure on herself to be as close to perfect as possible, while also acknowledging that “it does not serve the work and can be a hindrance.”
When Suri auditioned for Aneesa, she scrapped her initial self-tape, enlisted a friend’s help, and re-did the entire audition, working on it until 2 a.m. the night before it was due. A few years later, when her manager brought her the It Lives Inside opportunity, Suri at first didn’t want to go out for the lead role, thinking she was better suited to the supporting cast. “I’m so insecure, it’s almost debilitating,” she confesses a few times during our conversation. “If I talk myself out of it and then get rejected, at least I’m prepared to fall.” But Suri's team convinced her to audition for the lead in the film, and she won the role.
Her artistry is chaotic, she says, but she doesn’t know what else she’d do — acting is what has always made sense to her. She wasn’t good at math or science as a kid, and being on the stage in any capacity has always felt like a second home for Suri because it lets her escape her self-critical thoughts, even fleetingly.
Suri realized that acting is the end-all-be-all for her during the 2023 SAG strike. “I have a very particular skill set, shout-out to Liam Neeson,” she says jokingly, referencing one of the actor's signature lines from Taken. “I wondered, ‘What the hell am I going to do outside of this? I love being on set.’”
The strike also drove home the point that acting is not a secure job, but supporting the guild’s mission to advocate for a sustainable living for actors everywhere was imperative. The uncertainty of the career scares her, and she says she has even considered quitting a few times, but, playing into that self-described chaos, Suri also finds the prospect of consistently new challenges to be exhilarating.
For now, her focus is on acting, though producing and directing aren’t out of the realm of possibility. It would seem that extending her career to Bollywood might also be a natural fit, as it’s been a touchpoint throughout her career, but she doesn’t have her sights set on the Indian film market in its current iteration.
“I would love to work in as many realms as possible,” Suri says politely. She pauses, wondering aloud if she should say this next thing on the record. She chooses her words carefully: “There are certain things that Bollywood needs to work on, whether it’s the colorism issue or nepotism.” I suggest nationalism as another example, and she eagerly agrees. “After they change some things, I’d be more than happy to,” says the trilingual actor, one in a growing contingent of voices to criticize the behemoth Hindi-language film business.
Suri keeps drawing the conversation back to her family throughout our chat, and it’s clear how vital they are to her; Suri’s face lights up when she talks about her “wildly and almost overly supportive” parents and their sacrifices. They still help her manage the Hollywood machine, and her respect for them is unmistakeable.
Her father is a former professional cricket player who was visiting the US when the 1984 Sikh genocide began in India. Their home state of Punjab was the epicenter of the terror, and his father told him not to return to the country, which forced him to build a life here from scratch. In giving up his own dream, he resolved to nurture his daughter’s into a career.
But Suri's parents also valued her childhood enough to shield her from aspects of the career when it wasn’t fun anymore. She remembers missing the fourth-grade pizza party to go to a commercial audition, where she stood in line for three hours, only to be skipped over for the part. Sensing their daughter's stress, her parents quietly paused her career and allowed her to play basketball and be a typical kid until the acting itch came back organically. Suri still consults them about her career, and calls her dad an “angel that was sent to me.”
Friends have also been a big source of comfort for Suri, though she’s had to navigate the question of who her real friends are from a young age. “After Valentine’s Day, I had a lot of people who were only my friends because I was in a movie, and it’s such a weird thing to experience,” she says with palpable sadness for her younger self. At first she went along with the attention, naively. Then, a few years later, the intentions of those kids were made clear when she got them all Christmas presents, but they didn’t get her anything in return.
It isn't a stretch to believe that forging friendships with fellow actors can be just as difficult, especially with others in the South Asian community with whom Suri is competing for roles. But even after Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was cast as Devi in Never Have I Ever — a role “every brown girl in this industry auditioned for,” including Suri — she counts Ramakrishnan as one of her “homies,” and believes their friendship can counteract the inherent rivalries that form when everyone is competing for the same opportunities. “I wish there was less of this feeling that 'There can only be one,’” Suri says, referring to the limited South Asian roles in Hollywood. “It’s something that Maitreyi and I have really bonded over: We support each other, and there hasn’t been an underlying layer of jealousy. I wish we had more of that.”
Championing each other’s wins can only help the collective, Suri believes, and she hopes her generation can start changing the dynamics within the diaspora. “When it’s someone else’s time to shine, let’s applaud them and lift them up," she says. "The more of us that we see, the more normalized it becomes.”
That’s her hope for future generations too, along with this sage advice: Make sure you’re entering the industry for healthy reasons. She’s quick to remind people of the misconception that Hollywood jobs equate to fame and fortune simply by showing her resume. “I’ve been in this game for a decade," she says. "It’s not a one-hit wonder every time. That’s very rare.”
Suri is both excited and nervous about what comes next. She’s drawn to living in New York City, where young adults often come alive, and she’s interested in theater, the “most disciplined form of acting.” She’s afraid of how AI can manipulate women’s bodies (referencing the Taylor Swift deepfake pornography controversy from earlier this year), which terrifies her as a woman and an actor, and of the ongoing emotional fluctuations tied to a career in entertainment.
Throughout our two-hour conversation, I can tell Suri is holding many things close to her chest — not just details about her favorite movies, but her career too. She often credits her team with helping her career rise to new heights, and her family for helping to keep her feet on the ground, but she rarely allows herself to be the central agent of change — despite this being a cover story about her. Even when I ask how she navigates her career amid the larger Hollywood apparatus, she hedges: “I feel very grateful to have a very intelligent team helping me in those realms,” she says, before leaning forward and throwing out the script. “You know what? Screw it. I want women — brown women, especially — to stop downplaying our accomplishments. I think it’s a waste of damn time.”
The dam breaks and her modest pride flows forward. “I’m not Jennifer Lawrence or anything," Suri says, "but if I could tell a younger me that I got this far, I don’t think she would believe it.”
Read all of our New Hollywood 2024 stories below:
- Maddie Ziegler on Dance Moms, New Movie Fitting In & Embracing Hollywood
- Ariana Greenblatt on Barbie, Borderlands, Billie Eilish & Child Stardom
- Keith Powers on Uglies, SAG Strikes, Issa Rae & Finding His Own Lane
- Christopher Briney on Reneé Rapp, Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 & Hollywood Next Moves
- Aida Osman on Rap Sh!t Cancellation, Black Stories in Hollywood & Facing Acting Fears
- Iñaki Godoy on One Piece, Latinos in Hollywood & Living His Best Life
- Megan Suri on Valentine’s Day, Bollywood & Movie Career Post Never Have I Ever
- The SAG Strike Proved How Unions Help Make Young People’s Dreams Viable
Photo Credits
Photographer Josefina Santos
Lighting Director Brian McGuffog
Gaffer Daniel Patrick
Gaffer Kane Katubig
Digitech Isan Monfort
Retouching Digital Area
Stylist Ian McRae
Stylist Assistant Auden Alblooshi
Stylist Assistant Mason Telles
Hair Stylist for Maddie Ziegler, Megan Suri Candice Birns at A-Frame Agency
Hair Stylist for Aida Osman, Ariana Greenblatt Suzette Boozer at A-Frame Agency
Groomer for Chris Briney, Keith Powers, Iñaki Godoy Melissa DeZarate at A-Frame Agency
Makeup Artist for Maddie Ziegler, Megan Suri Miriam Nichterlein at A-Frame Agency
Makeup Artist for Aida Osman, Ariana Greenblatt Rob Rumsey at A-Frame Agency
HMU Assistant Jenna Lee
Manicurist Rachel Messick
Prop Stylist Annika Fischer
Prop Assistant Elvis Barlow-Smith
Production Hyperion
Design Director Emily Zirimis
Designer Liz Coulbourn
Visual Editor Bea Oyster
Sr. Fashion Editor Tchesmeni Leonard
Associate Fashion Editor Kat Thomas
Assistant Fashion Editor Tascha Berkowitz
Video Credits
Director/Producer Logan Tsugita
Director/Producer Catherine Mhloyi
Social Video Director/Producer Ali Farooqui
Director of Creative Dev Mi-Anne Chan
Camera Op Nick Massey Ga
Social Cover Video Editor Lindsey Fink
Site Video Header Editor Crystal Waterton
Editorial Credits
Editor-in-Chief Versha Sharma
Executive Editor Danielle Kwateng
Features Director Brittney McNamara
Talent Director Eugene Shevertalov
Senior Culture Editor P. Claire Dodson
Entertainment News Editor Kaitlyn McNab
Contributing Editor Alyssa Hardy
Associate Director of Audience Development and Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti
Sr. Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser
Social Media Manager Jillian Selzer
Copy Editors Dawn Rebecky and Leslie Lipton
Research Editor Cristina Sada
