Richa Moorjani Says 'Never Have I Ever' Boosted Her 'Confidence' on Sets Without 'Other Brown People' (Exclusive)
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"I just felt more comfortable than I might have felt in the past," the actress exclusively tells PEOPLE of the hit Netflix series' impact on her career
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Richa Moorjani has never felt more confident.
The Never Have I Ever actress, 34, is praising the show’s set for not only boosting her faith in herself, but also for always making her feel like she was truly welcome.
“First of all, I was not the only brown person, and I was playing an Indian character with an Indian name who was allowed to have a slight Indian accent, but the comedy's not about her accent. It's just part of who she is,” Moorjani tells PEOPLE of her character Kamala on the Netflix series, the fourth and final season of which is available Thursday.
Moorjani wrapped filming in August 2022, and she immediately traveled to Calgary in Alberta, Canada, to film the fifth season of Fargo for six months, which she calls an “incredible experience.”
Lara Solanki/Netflix
Still, the Fargo set looked a lot different from the one she had grown accustomed to after four seasons of working on Never Have I Ever.
“There was nothing wrong with me being the only brown person. In fact, I think coming off of a set like Never Have I Ever just gave me more confidence walking onto another set where I didn't have other brown people,” she shares. “I just felt more comfortable than I might have felt in the past coming off of a set where I was a lead character and always made to feel like I belonged.”
Show creators Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher were conscious of giving their cast a voice on set, and Moorjani says the freedom of not having to check even a small part of her true self at the door made the biggest difference.
“I didn't feel like I had to, for lack of a better word, whitewash myself in any way. I felt like I got to just be my full authentic Indian self, and I was not the only one. We just felt so comfortable being able to say, for example, little things — like I remember on the very first day of shooting for me, it was a family dinner scene with Poorna [Jagannathan] and Maitreyi [Ramakrishnan], and they had put out forks and knives and stuff for us to use, and we were like, ‘Oh, actually we would be eating with our hands if it's Indian food,’” Moorjani recalls.
The authenticity didn't stop there, either.
“We don't wear shoes in the house. So from that day onwards [after we mentioned it], no actors ever wore shoes in the set house, even if they were guest actors," Moorjani says. "It became a thing written into the script."
As for what the final season holds for Kamala, Moorjani says she thinks audiences will be “happy"— something she and Kamala are always in pursuit of.
“I think, just like [Kamala], I have had issues with putting my happiness first because I'm constantly wanting to make everyone around me happy. And I think that's her biggest character, not flaw, but that's something that she's constantly navigating.”
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Never Have I Ever season 4 is streaming now on Netflix.
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