Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, is the latest show created by Mindy Kaling. Apart from being a teen comedy series, what’s unique is that we get to see brown representation on the screen, with Maitreyi Ramakrishnan playing the role of Devi, a first-generation Indian teen in the US.
The show’s premise is simple with Devi trying to get intimate with the boy of her dreams while dealing with everyday tussles with her mother, friends, and school. Even though the Indian representation isn’t entirely perfect, the show has still managed to get rave reviews and favorable audience reactions. For Mindy Kaling, the show has a personal angle as it’s inspired by her own growing up years. However, there are some fictional fantasies too which Kaling hoped were real in her teenage.
So, here are 5 things in Never Have I Ever that were actually inspired by Mindy Kaling’s life and 5 that were not.
10 Inspired: Ethnicity
It would be stating the obvious but the first and foremost similarity between Devi and Mindy Kaling is that they both are of Indian ethnicity. Devi is the first-generation daughter of Indian parents, the same as Kaling.
While Kaling is half-Tamil, Devi is also shown as having Tamilian parents. To add accuracy to the portrayal, actress Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is also of Canadian-Tamil ethnicity.
9 Not inspired: Different Cities
While Devi’s life is shown to take place in Sherman Oaks, a suburban family neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. The showrunner, on the other hand, had a ’90s childhood growing up in Boston.
But this doesn’t affect the story much as the show focuses more on Devi’s struggles in her Indian household as well as her school. You hardly see her at any other place in the city other than these two.
8 Inspired: Sense of Loss
Early on, it gets revealed that Devi’s father had passed away in an unexpected cardiac arrest. But his father does make occasional appearances when she’s down, either in flashbacks or even as a mystical coyote!
Mindy Kaling thankfully never saw the demise of her parental figures while growing up, but she grieved for her mother in her 30s, who passed away from pancreatic cancer. This was a crucial point in her life as she tried getting over it. Even Devi tries to move over this loss while getting reminded of her old man every once in a while. As the comedienne revealed in an interview from last year, the show “deals with the emotional fallout of death and trauma.”
7 Not inspired: Devi’s more outgoing nature
Devi is the epitome of a nerd initially. But like the lead characters of Booksmart, she too aspires to hang out with the ‘cool kids’, have sex, and get invited at ‘alcohol parties.’ By the end of the first season, she even manages to come close to her goals, getting invited to such parties. Finally, one cannot put Devi in one watertight high school category as she starts getting the taste of both the academic and non-academic world.
Maybe, while creating this character, Mindy Kaling wanted to make Devi as the epitome of all the high school fantasies that she could not enjoy. In her book Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me, she described herself as ‘a respectful and hardworking wallflower.’ She also adds, ‘I don’t think I went to a single party with alcohol at it.
6 Inspired: Slightly strict parents
Devi’s mother is not that much of a stern parent and tries talking to her in the sweetest voice. But she’s shown as being slightly on the conservative side, not allowing her to venture out much. Devi, in fact, lies to her mother whenever she wants to meet a boy or go to one of the alcohol parties.
Mindy Kaling has had a similar household experience with her parents consistently advising her to focus on academics. This is further explained in detail, again in her memoir. “My parents didn’t let me do social things on weeknights, because they were for homework—and maybe an episode of The X-Files if I was being good, and on extremely rare occasions, I could watch Seinfeld, if I had aced my PSATs or something,” a passage reads.
5 Not inspired: Absence of a real passion
Devi seems to be good at studies and other than that, she’s just obsessive over boys as her hormones act up. There’s no other passion or hobby that we see her indulge in while her best friends obsess over robotics and theatre. Maybe, the viewers will get a glimpse of this aspect of Devi’s personality in the second season.
In contrast, Mindy Kaling had found her passion for comedy way back in teenage, as revealed in a podcast with NPR. Shows like Saturday Night Live, Cheers, Dr Katz, and Frasier had served as constant inspirations in her writing. As she absorbed Comedy Central from a young age, she had started writing comedy plays from the age of 6 itself, she said in an interview with The New York Times.
4 Inspired: Experiencing FOMO
Devi’s constant goals on being a cool kid in high school make her a classic patient of the Fear of Missing Out (what Gen Z dubs as FOMO). In Mindy Kaling’s memoir, this FOMO is also touched upon as she always felt she was missing out ‘because of how the high school experience was dramatized in TV and song.’
As mentioned before, Devi maybe stands for living the life which Kaling wished she got a chance at. Devi is afraid of missing out on the classic high school experience and works on turning these fantasies to reality. Kaling, on the other hand, turned these regrets into a Netflix series!
3 Not Inspired: Devi’s slight lack of love for parents
Even though she gets emotional flashbacks of her late father, Devi tries avoiding spending much time with her mother almost on every occasion. Mindy Kaling however added in Is Everyone Hanging Out With Me that she did enjoy spending time with her parents, even if they could get a tad bit strict at times.
As she puts it in her own words, “Later, when you’ve grown up, you realize you never get to hang out with your family. You pretty much have only 18 years to spend with them full-time, and that’s it.”
2 Inspired: Fantasies with crushes
While Devi ends up with her frenemy Ben in Never Have I Ever, Mindy Kaling never got to live such a fantasy. But still, she like Devi in the early episodes had her own series of fantasies with high school crushes.
She got candid about this way back in a 2015 column in which she elaborated on having plenty of crushes. These proved to be a good escape mechanism for her to imagine hanging out and being close with all the hot guys in her school. Being single however turned out to be a blessing, as she reveals, for it helped her spend more time with her obsession with comedy.
1 Not inspired: Dependency on social media
Mindy Kaling put her teenage hopes and desires in Devi’s character but at the same time gave her a 21st-century background. Hence, social media plays a major theme in the life of the teens around her. There’s a hilarious scene in which Devi and her best friends record a coordinated TikTok dance video.
Then, when Paxton clicks a selfie with Devi in the hospital, he uploads it as an Instagram post. The fact that he put it up as a post rather than a temporary Instagram story amuses Devi and fills her with joy. Such post-millennial issues might seem trivial on the surface but they seem to matter a lot for such teenagers as the series’s Gen Z-oriented satire shows.
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