Never Have I Ever actor Sendhil Ramamurthy on why it’s tough being brown and beautiful in Hollywood

Last December, while the festive buzz in Bengaluru softens in a quiet lull, Sendhil Ramamurthy and I made a trip to Chikmalur. We crossed the coffee plantations, we are launched around joyfolds and we were getting from top to bottom beautiful forest paths – and yet we have never seen each other once. He was on vacation with his family and I with mine. And although we are stayed in stations located less than an hour from each other, owned by the same company, almost exactly the same dates, meeting the actor of Hero (2006-2010) Fame has not yet been written in my stars. And probably for a good reason.

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When our paths cross on a zoom more than a month later, the I never have (2020-2023) Star, 50, is on another continent, and if the short and mainly bearded theme face appears on my screen is something, I think I would probably not have recognized it anyway . Today, he does not look like his angelica I never have Character, or his alter ego of Swashbuckling, Vikram, in his last outing of Bollywood, Make a aur do pyaar (2024). If anything, he looks younger, warmer, cooler – although I soon learn that it is a look with which he is not entirely in peace. “I can’t wait to develop hair and shave the beard,” he said later on WhatsApp, adding that it is for his next role in the British psychological thriller series, The next couple. Unlike me, Ramamurthy fans had no trouble recognizing it. “The number of people who came to Bengaluru this time just after having followed my work … It was quite incredible,” he said from his apartment in Antwerp, where he is currently based.