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

This past December, as the festive buzz in Bengaluru softened into a quiet lull, Sendhil Ramamurthy and I took a trip to Chikmagalur. We moseyed through coffee plantations, lolled around bonfires, and gallivanted up and down beautiful forest paths—and yet, we never once saw each other. He was on vacation with his family, and I with mine. And though we stayed at resorts situated within an hour of each other, owned by the same company, on nearly exactly the same dates, meeting the actor of Heroes (2006-2010) fame wasn’t written in my stars just yet. And probably for good reason.

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When our paths do cross on Zoom over a month later, the Never Have I Ever (2020-2023) star, 50, is on a different continent, and if the short-maned, primly bearded face that appears on my screen is anything to go by, I reckon I probably wouldn’t have recognised him anyway. Today, he doesn’t look anything like his angelic Never Have I Ever character, or his swashbuckling alter ego, Vikram, in his latest Bollywood outing, Do Aur Do Pyaar (2024). If anything, he looks younger, hotter, cooler—although I soon learn it’s a look he isn’t entirely at peace with. “I can’t wait to grow out the hair and shave off the beard,” he tells me later over Whatsapp, adding that it’s for his next role in the British psychological thriller series, The Couple Next Door. Unlike me, Ramamurthy’s fans had no trouble recognising him. “The number of people that came up to me in Bengaluru this time just from having followed my work…it was pretty amazing,” he says from his apartment in Antwerp, where he’s currently based.