This Day, That Year – December 28

This day in history we feature Maitreyi Ramakrishan. A young talented Canadian actress was born on this day in 2001.

Trivia – Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is known for her leading role as Devi Vishwakumar in the Netflix teen comedy series Never Have I Ever and as Priya Mangal in the Pixar film Turning Red. Ramakrishnan made the decision to pursue an acting career in her last year at High School, and got the role in the Netflix teen comedy series Never Have I Ever less than a year after. 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 the series in Los Angeles. In 2021, she deferred her acceptance a second time, while also switching her degree to human rights and equity studies.

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Ramakrishnan made her professional acting debut as Devi Vishwakumar, the protagonist, in the Netflix teen comedy streaming television series Never Have I Ever. In 2019, she was chosen by Mindy Kaling out of 15,000 candidates that had applied for an open casting call for the show. 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. Ramakrishnan was 17 at the time of her casting and had not acted professionally. Her casting received significant media attention, especially in Canada, both due to the nature of the open casting call and for her Tamil Canadian identity. The same year, Today named her one of eighteen “Groundbreakers”, a list of girls who were breaking down barriers and changing the world. In late April 2020, Never Have I Ever premiered on Netflix. Both the series and Ramakrishnan’s performance received positive reviews, with Variety saying it was a “breakout performance”. She received nominations for an Independent Spirit Award, a Canadian Screen Award, and an MTV Movie & TV Award. In July 2020, Netflix reported the series had been viewed by 40 million households globally since its release. In May 2020, Ramakrishnan was a co-host for the livestream segments of the 8th Canadian Screen Awards, along with Lloyd Robertson, Herbie Kuhn, Emma Hunter, Evany Rosen, Kayla Lorette, Eric McCormack, and Théodore Pellerin. Later that month, she also took part in the live-read series Acting for a Cause, appearing as Olivia for a live staged reading of William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, to help raise money for a local hospital in Chicago, which was struggling to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2021, Ramakrishnan was included and named as Breakout Actor in Time’s Time100 Next list of influential, rising stars. She also reprised her role as protagonist, Devi Vishwakumar, in the second season of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, which premiered on the streaming platform in July that year. The season was positively received with critics and audiences praising Ramakrishnan’s performance. In March 2022, Ramakrishnan was announced as a brand ambassador for clothing retailer American Eagle’s “Member’s Always: Future Together” campaign along with Madelyn Cline, Joshua Bassett, Michael Evans Behling, Coco Gauff, and Mxmtoon.

Source – Wikipedia