A quiet passion

For actor Poorna Jagannathan, fame was never the end goal. Now that she's tasted success, playing a feisty, funny mom on Never Have I Ever, she's realigning her priorities

- Arshia Dhar

Poorna Jagannathan is surprised to learn that IMDB lists 53 projects to her credit, given that she debuted only in 2004. "I read that and it just hit me," says the 50-year-old actor, laughing. Even the two-decade-long journey has been riddled with pauses. "Most of my career, there were like two tiny projects a year. There was no pace; it was a snail's pace. There were no roles for women who look like me," she says.

Until her runaway Netflix hit Never Have I Ever, which concluded with a fourth season in June, few viewers knew Jagannathan. She'd had a breakthrough role in the HBO miniseries The Night Of (2016), in which she played Safar Khan, a Pakistani in New York, whose son is wrongly accused of murder. She'd shone in smaller but potent roles in Delhi Belly (2011), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013), and Big Little Lies (2017-'19) and Better Call Saul (2015-'22).

Never Have I Ever, then, is the surprise jewel. Jagannathan plays Nalini, the widowed, grieving mother to precocious teen Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). In a show about high schoolers dealing with heartbreaks and hormones, that relationship forms the softer core. Their chemistry is epic: "Pray you get into Princeton," Nalini tells Devi in Season One. "Don't waste your prayers on stupid things like world peace."

On the show, created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, Jagannathan plays an obsessive Type-A mother, but departs from lazy Brown mom caricatures. Nalini acknowledges her desires when she has a fling with a fellow doctor. She has ambitions and values outside of her position as a mother. In the later seasons, she supports her niecein-law Kamala and her mother-in-law Nirmala in their endeavours to find love.