we’re a little late to the party, but the month of may marked aapi heritage month. some chose to celebrate the occasion with food, cultural events, or even networking experiences. for us, we like to reflect on our identity with one of our favorite pastimes, taught to us by generations before: being haters. welcome back to our annual ranking of south asian celebrities! this year, we’ve added ~8 new public figures to our list, but we’ve marked which celebs have gone up (or down) in our estimation.
elite
geraldine viswanathan: still number one in our hearts. hilarious, talented, beautiful, loves her sister, continually acknowledges her one white parent with the roles she takes, still looks brown… global superstardom incoming!
riz ahmed: good actor who takes good roles and is mindful of why he’s invited to the section, what more could you want?
kal penn: smart, handsome, gay, a man of many lives and many talents
hasan minhaj: in a world where white comedians come online every week to complain about ‘wokeness’ ruining their comedy, it seems a bit unfair that hasan minhaj, our generally unproblematic fave, was the only one who had to defend himself for embellishing his comedy this year. like mindy, he continues paving the way for others on this list
mindy kaling: again, half of the other people on this ranking would not be here without her. also, her only crime seems to be writing from her own lived experience—and it’s usually funny!
rahul kohli: a mainstay on this list. need him in a rom-com ASAP, whether on-screen or in one of our lives. we’re not picky!
nik dodani: we’ve been fans of nik since we first saw him on atypical, and we can’t wait to see his work in twisters this summer (one of our most anticipated movies of 2024)
jai paul: this list’s annual nepo baby (rahul says he should be here)
broti gupta: okay maybe she’s just a celeb to us but she’s one of our fave twitter accounts <3 we have never watched the simpsons, but if we did, it would only be because she’s one of their writers
very cool
dev patel (+1): after years of everyone yelling at us that dev patel deserves to be higher (further proving our point that he has been tokenized as the one singular hot and talented brown man), he’s finally moved himself up with the release of monkey man. let the record state we’ve always loved dev, but we’ve been waiting for him to do something for US
karan soni: we’re still manifesting his time to shine in the mainstream, but he already shines in our hearts!!!
padma lakshmi: talented, beautiful, and the tiktoks she’s been making with her daughter krishna have been lovely and fun
sarita choudhury: very cool, very talented, and very nice (if her smiling at us on the street is anything to go by). she’s taken a lot of interesting roles throughout her career (mississippi masala, for one) and we think everyone should put some respect on her name
aparna nancherla: we don’t usually respect stand-up comedians, but we’ll make an exception for her. criminally underused on bob’s burgers as standout student susmita
raveena: hopefully one day we’ll have multiple brown popstars on our list but for now, raveena’s holding it down
sunita mani: hot, fun, cool… her only crime is not being in enough things
poorna jagannathan: poorna aunty just gets it
maitreyi ramakrishnan: her playing rapunzel would be the only thing compelling us to watch another disney live action remake
sameer gadhia: apologies to sameer for overlooking him on our past lists. we have to pay our respects to the lead singer of young the giant for making us feel represented during the golden age of indie music (circa 2011). also, very cool that their latest album was inspired by the mahabharata and his immigrant parents’ marriage
monica + tanvi ravichandran: our first influencers to hit this list, AND they’re sisters! although we can’t tell if they actually like each other (that pic above is the only one we could find of them together + we only recently learned they are sisters), we love seeing what they do with makeup and fashion
hannah simone (+1): though her name is hannah simone, we’ve since learned that she 1) has lived in new delhi (which is more than we can say for ourselves) and 2) worked as a human rights officer with the UN. plus, we’re thinking of rewatching new girl
cool
avan jogia (-1): unfortunately this man doesn’t seem to actually do anything besides look hot, but that’s enough! and we love his new relationship with halsey
simone ashley: she’s unfortunately become dev’s companion in being tokenized as the only hot and talented brown woman (and going by simone ashley makes it harder for us to defend her), but we finally started watching bridgerton, and it’s very cool to see a dark-skinned indian woman take the lead romantic role in an american show so we’re willing to overlook it
charithra chandran: beautiful, talented, funny, can’t wait to see where she goes next
parminder nagra: changed every indian girl’s life with bend it like beckham in 2002 and didn’t receive the breakout success she deserved. manifesting her in white lotus season 4
avantika: seems cute and talented and sweet! we were not fans of the mean girls musical movie adaptation, but she did sell us with her performance as the incredibly stupid karen. justice for dumb indians! also cute that she’s actually a student at columbia
vidya gopalan aka @queencitytrends: our third and last influencer on this year’s ranking! we love that she makes her kids go to kumon (we’ve shared the trauma of summer workbooks) and stays true to her indian roots but don’t love how much she features her kids in her content… and she’s far too extravagantly wealthy to ever be relatable
ambika mod: we are too emotionally fragile to watch one day, but we’re excited to see what ambika does next! and she’s been serving looks on these red carpets
m. night shyamalan: his movies are FUN, and we like that his daughter is directing her own one this year
aryan simhadri: it’s cool to see an indian kid take the lead in one of the biggest book franchises ever, and we love his friendship with mckenna grace (our queen)
rupi kaur (+1): it was pretty cool that she declined the white house’s invitation to celebrate diwali. we aren’t huge fans of her poetry, but she gets a wildly disproportionate amount of hate [contact us for a further thesis on this subject]
amrit kaur (+1): our biggest hope for s3 of sex lives of college girls is that bela starts pronouncing her own name correctly. but she seems very cool in real life
fine
suraj sharma (-1): would like to see him in more!
karan brar (-1): seems like a nice kid!
iman vellani (-1): also seems like a nice kid!
kumail nanjiani (-1): realistically, we will probably never forgive him for his transgressions in the big sick, but we wish him the best otherwise
freida pinto: also seems like a nice woman! hope to see her again one day
zayn malik: still waiting for him to make good solo music
on thin ice
naomi scott (-1): i’m sorry guys we just don’t like her and 50% of it is because her name is naomi scott. nothing about this list is impartial, but you knew that
sanjay gupta (-1): we get that his whole thing is medicine and wellness but it’s a bit tone-deaf for your main cnn contribution about gaza to be about how americans can protect their mental health, no?
priyanka chopra: we’ll always respect her as the first bollywood star to really break into the western lens, but she’s still very annoying. if we met her irl though we’d pretend to love her because 1) our dad would want us to and 2) we desperately need the scoop on the sophie turner/joe jonas breakup
jameela jamil: honestly has the potential to move up if she continues on her current track (keeping quiet and to herself)! see you next year, jameela
um
jay shetty (-1): feeling very vindicated by him being exposed as a fake former monk, among other things. someone please get him brown contacts, we’re shaking
kamala harris: thinks she just fell out of a coconut tree :/
meena harris: gotta keep the family together <3
liza koshy: maybe mean to put her on par with kamala harris but omg she is not for us
lilly singh: she was kind of set up to fail with that late-night talk show gig, in part by the studio, and in part by the fact that she has never been funny
nimrata ‘nikki’ haley, vivek ramaswamy, piyush ‘bobby’ jindal, etc: we cannot speak freely on these matters but you get it. same for rishi sunak okay stop asking us to include every politician on this list @rahul
IN’S & OUT’S
IN:
instagram reels. wtf is going on there but it’s beautiful
npr’s up first podcast
being everywhere, being so julia, etc (unfortunately charli xcx’s indian heritage isn’t strong enough to qualify her for a position on this list)
OUT:
discourse about bisexual women in heterosexual relationships. please make it stop
the term “spicy,” whether it’s used to describe smut or identify someone as “neurospicy” (aka neurodivergent) — thank you jenna for bringing this linguistic epidemic to our attention
conservatism, unless it’s a result of brain damage (either from having a stroke or from having a parasitic worm eat your brain tissue)
RAHUL’S CORNER
okay that’s all! let us know what you think of our ranking but please check your privilege before disagreeing with us
why are the ins and outs always so accurate
Im dying for NBA hands. Would settle for G-League hands if I needed to