Entertainment

Relive Your Teenage Thirst With Mindy Kaling’s ‘Never Have I Ever’ Trailer

by Jessica Wang
Netflix’s ‘Never Have I Ever’ Trailer Is All About That Teenage Thirst
Netflix

Ah, the horny days of adolescence. If you miss it, Netflix’s new trailer for Never Have I Ever will bring you right back to your teenage thirst. Set to debut on April 27, Never Have I Ever is a coming-of-age series that follows an overachieving, first-generation Indian American teen named Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as she navigates the trials and tribulations of high school. Created and executive produced by Mindy Kaling, the series is based on Kaling’s own childhood in the suburbs of Massachusetts.

The new trailer released on April 15 is full of adolescent familiarity: it’s the start of sophomore year and Devi and her friends want to reinvent themselves as “cool” so they could get boyfriends and have their “cherries popped.” The friends posit in the clip, “We are smart, and idiots are banging all the time; we can learn how to do it, too.” Like any quintessential teen narrative, such reinvention entails a makeover of some sort: Devi changes up her clothes and her pals muse of her new look, “You look like an Indian Kardashian.”

The Netflix series also stars Poorna Jagannathan, Richa Moorjani, Ramona Young, and Benjamin Norris. And Kaling is reuniting with The Mindy Project’s Lang Fisher for the project, who serves as showrunner, executive producer, and writer.

At a Netflix brunch event in February, Kaling discussed the series and its depiction of “badly behaved” nerds — or, more specifically, a badly behaved Indian nerd. “Nerds are not only the wallflowers and the quiet ones,” Kaling said, per Variety. “We’re ambitious, we have obnoxious personalities sometimes, we want to have sex and dreams like all the other kids.” She later added, “I felt lucky to be able to do a show about an Indian nerd who’s also badly behaved, to show that because I’m deeply familiar with it.”

The series’ infusion of Indian culture is significant, too. Kaling noted that Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s vice president of local language originals, played a significant role in getting the series made. At the event, Bajaria addressed the significance of diverse stories in the YA category. “There’s been these amazing YA shows from around the world that have the same universal themes of relationships, coming of age, right of passage,” Bajaria said, per Variety. “To see yourself in your own language, in your own country, with the nuances and specificities of that country, has been a really powerful next step in YA for us.”