Maitreyi Ramakrishnan wants to make this clear: She had to audition for Best of the Best, the coming-of-age comedy playing out against the world of collegiate Bollywood dance competitions. Maya was actually conceived around the same time, when Patriot Act host Hasan Minhaj and his writing and producing partner Prashanth Venkataramanujam spent their time in lockdown cooking up Best of the Best, their answer to the Step Up franchise, which is finally hitting Netflix on Sept. 18. For some fans, who were eager to see Devi go to college, Best of the Best might serve as a suitable replacement for a continuation of the show, which ended in 2023 after four seasons.
The movie reunites Ramakrishnan with one of her Never Have I Ever directors, Lena Khan, and co-choreographer Joya Kazi, who appeared in its first season, performing a Bollywood-style routine to the song “Nagada Sang Dhol.” In that scene, Kazi fluidly blended India's traditional Kathak dance with the swirling and romantic poses choreographed specifically for the big screen in Mumbai. That fusion, in a nutshell, is what Bollywood dance is all about. Devi, who harbored complicated insecurities about her cultural identity, scoffed at the performance.
Ramakrishnan’s Maya, on the other hand, would scoff at anyone challenging her Bollywood-style supremacy. We’re at dinner, discussing Ramakrishnan’s leap from leading a TV show to carrying a movie, a conversation we will pick up again a week later on a Zoom call with Minhaj. I meet up with Ramakrishnan at East Tea Can, a restaurant in her Mississauga neighbourhood, west of Toronto.
She orders the cardamom black tea for us to share but insists she could finish off the entire pot by herself, and introduces me to mana’eesh, a stone-baked Middle Eastern pizza served with minced beef and lamb. I’ve interviewed Ramakrishnan on several occasions, witnessing how young fans would swarm her in the wild. This time, she avoids all that by strategically choosing a table in the back and facing away from the diners, though our server recognizes her instantaneously, even behind her large burgundy frames.
Her nose ring and traditional bell-shaped earrings are less flash and more a reminder that Ramakrishnan, 24, has always been more at home with South Asian culture than Devi was in that first season. That’s one of the many reasons Minhaj felt she was just right to play Maya, the UCLA freshman thrust into competition with her childhood best friend Anjali. The latter is played by Priyanka Kedia, a fresh-faced Indian-American actor originally from the Bay area, who joined Best of the Best after graduating from NYU and catching a breakthrough part in Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day.
Her Anjali is the more poised social butterfly to the headstrong and rebellious Maya, their lifelong relationship tested when they both make the school’s esteemed Bollywood dance team and must jockey for parts while adjusting to campus life, rigorous academics, and new relationships. Their story draws from Minhaj and co-writer Venkataramanujam’s own college experiences. She was the person that I felt had the two things that I think Maya needed.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
