Maitreyi Ramakrishnan of 'Never Have I Ever' reminds us that she's always been on one team

LOS ANGELES — Maitreyi Ramakrishnan was 17 when she and her best friend saw a tweet from Mindy Kaling announcing a casting call for her new Neflix series. The pair headed to the library's community center in their hometown of Mississauga, Ontario, to put themselves on tape.

Kaling and co-creator Lang Fisher were going into production on their series, "Never Have I Ever," a coming-of-age teen comedy that revolves around Devi Vishwakumar, a first-generation Indian American teenager. The character is coping with her father's sudden death and struggling with her identity, all while she's on a mission to become a popular kid at her high school, lose her virginity and get into Princeton University. The show is loosely based on Kaling's own upbringing as an Indian American teen with immigrant parents. Ramakrishnan, dark-haired, prone to saying "nifty," and exuding a laid-back vibe, looked and felt connected to the part. She beat out 15,000 hopefuls and, two weeks after graduating high school, was bound for L.A.

"It's really hard to get me to be nervous," she recalled recently of her first day ever on a set. "I just remember Lang's first note to me was 'OK, so that was great, but just let me just slow it down by like, 70%.' I was talking so fast because I was so excited. I was like Busta Rhymes with my lines."

When I first spoke with Ramakrishnan ahead of the show's launch in April 2020, during the early days of shelter-at-home orders for the COVID-19 pandemic, it was over Zoom — I was in my L.A. apartment; she was in her family's dining room. She spoke energetically about the joys of playing the video game "Animal Crossing: New Horizons," her obsession with the TV series "Community," and painting Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' on a piece of bedroom furniture.

Now, the show that introduced Ramakrishnan to the world has released its fourth and final season. The concluding episodes of "Never Have I Ever" follow Devi as a senior eager to graduate but anxious about her future after she's placed on the waitlist for her dream school, Princeton. (In the end, she makes it in.)

Sitting at a table inside a restaurant at a West Hollywood hotel on a recent weekday, Ramakrishnan, now 21, is as effervescent and affable as ever discussing the final season in between moments of praising the "Shrek" soundtrack and jokingly expressing frustration at her cast's poor showing on "Family Feud."

In the time since filming wrapped last