3. What discontinued food or beverage item would you like to see brought back?
KS: Ooh, that’s a really good question. Honestly, all I can think about, and I don’t know enough about what’s discontinued, but all I can think about is foreign snacks, like matcha Kit Kat flavors. I don’t know if we ever had it in America, but why aren’t they doing those flavors for America? Because from all I can tell in L.A., everyone’s having matcha. So I’m like, how has this not become a mainstream flavor here? So I would just say, bring the Japanese snacks—which were never discontinued—here. I’ll order them.
4. Who was your first pop culture crush?
KS: The first person that comes to mind, and it’s not because there was a new [Freakier Friday] trailer today, is Lindsay Lohan. I was a huge fan of Mean Girls, and I just found her so endlessly charming, and it was before I think I knew I wanted to act or anything. I was just attracted to her natural charisma on screen, and I watched those sort of movies over and over again. And then the other person was Adam Brody, because I was a huge fan of The O.C. I grew up in India, and the show was really popular there when I was in high school. I wasn’t sure about my identity or who I was, and this mean cool kid in my school said, “You’re like the Indian Seth Cohen.” And it wasn’t an insult. It was a compliment to be the cool nerd. So I guess he was another really, really big one.
AVC: I think that’s a tent you would find yourself under with a lot of people.
KS: Yeah, we’re clearly all now watching Nobody Wants This. That whole generation of people have grown up and we’re like More, we want more.
5. What would you consider your biggest pop culture blind spot?
KS: I mean, I have a lot. The biggest blind spots are classic Hollywood movies, like The AFI 100. I have not seen a lot of very classic movies. Again, I grew up in India, so I mostly watched Bollywood, and then I watched very commercial Hollywood movies that would come out there. So I have a huge gap of all the classic movies. I haven’t seen The Godfather—I’ve seen Megalopolis, but I haven’t seen The Godfather, so I dunno what that says. [Laughs.] I don’t know if you want to remove me from this list for doing that, but yes, I did go see Megalopolis at The Grove and I was sitting there the entire time being like, why am I watching this and not having seen The Godfather?
AVC: I think “why am I watching this?” is a pretty common response to Megalopolis.
KS: Yeah. What an experience watching that movie in a movie theater. Wow.
AVC: Which one of those classic movies would you start with? Do you think you’ll watch The Godfather soon?
KS: No, I want to watch the classic Hollywood musicals and stuff like Singin’ In The Rain. They look so beautiful, and in this modern world where we can do so much with CG, I love watching older movies where everything was practical, and I like seeing the blood, sweat, and pain come through. You can see it on the screen. Oh, I also haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz, so when I went to see Wicked with my friend, I was like, what’s happening? And he was whispering and updating me on The Wizard of Oz, which I do need to watch as well. So here we go. Maybe I’ll start with that.
6. When were you the most starstruck and by whom?
KS: I was the most starstruck at an audition because I was reading with Daniel Radcliffe. I ended up getting this job. It was a TV show called Miracle Workers, and we auditioned at the Broadway Video offices, which were all glass. As I was being led to read with him, I could see him through the glass, and it was this really weird thing where I had been in the business for a while by then, so I thought I was over being starstruck all the time but something about that really took me back. I think when I auditioned for [Miracle Workers], I was maybe 27 or something, and in my twenties, I would do this thing where if I was really a fan of someone, I would be mean to them. [Laughs.] I wouldn’t be nice because it was almost like I doubled down, so I would be ice-cold and pretend I didn’t know anything about them because I worried if I said even one thing, it would just blurt out in a creepy way.
I didn’t know I was going to get the job, so Harry Potter didn’t come up. But then I got the job, and we had a big table read and I was just panicked the entire time. I just wanted to play cool. So I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend I don’t know anything about Harry Potter. And then we did the table read, and then we had a break, and we were in a small group of people and someone was like, “Oh, some crew member’s going to work on the show, and they were on Potter.” That’s what they said to Daniel. And I just blurted out, “What’s that?” [Laughs.] There was a lot of awkward silence. And then Daniel, bless his heart, was like, “Oh, it’s this movie I was in.” The entire time I’m like, oh, no, what have I just started? Because now I have to pretend that I’ve lived in a world where I don’t know what Harry Potter is—the books, movies, anything. And then a few weeks into the shooting the first season, I was like, “I do know what Harry Potter is,” and he was like, “Yeah, I figured.” And then he was like, “Do you have any questions?” And I was like, “Can I ask questions?” He was like, yeah. So then every weekend I would go home, watch a different movie, and come in with questions and ask how they made it. I really went from one extreme to the other—I went from not knowing him to annoying the hell out of him, but I got it out of my system after the first season, I think.
AVC: I do kind of love this idea of negging celebrities, though.
KS: [Laughs.] Oh god, it’s horrible! The instinct will sometimes still come up where I just want to be so rude because I just want to be like, just the opposite of what [they] think it’s going to be. But it’s horrible. I don’t recommend it. It’s not worth it.
7. What piece of advice that you received while you were coming up in the industry, would you say no longer really applies to people now coming up?
KS: One piece of advice was you should kind of pick your lane, in terms of do you want to do TV or film? Do you want to do comedy? The kind of good thing in the mess of everything now is that there isn’t really any of that. People are doing a TV show then doing a movie, then doing something else and doing commercials, then doing Instagram. You don’t really get stuck in a lane that you’ve picked, so I think that really doesn’t apply, that old mentality of you have to be a movie actor or TV actor, or don’t do certain commercials or don’t do certain endorsements. It doesn’t matter as much anymore, I think.
8. Who is someone new in your field that everyone should be paying attention to?
KS: There’s this actress, her name is Amita Rao. She’s on the show Adults, but I watched her in the show Deli Boys, and I mean, this doesn’t happen often, but I watched her and she was just a guest star, and I was just blown away by her comedic timing. And I immediately, honestly was starting an email to my agent and being like, You need to rep this person. I felt like she was such a talent. Then I was like, wait, let me see what she has going on and I went on IMDb and she’s like the lead of this FX show that has billboards all over. So I was like, she’s [doing] fine, but there’s just something so unique about her comedic voice and I find her so, so funny.
AVC: I think that show is helping fill the void of hangout shows—we don’t have a ton of them these days.
KS: I know, I miss hangout shows. I miss Broad City so much. I miss all of that. I’ll never get sick of young underdogs in New York City, just trying to make it. I find it so nostalgic, from Friends to all of this new stuff.
9. What’s your biggest travel pet peeve?
KS: Anyone on the plane who brings their own food that has a certain smell to it. I mean, at this stage it’s like, what are we doing? You can’t do that—just eat it at the gate where there’s better ventilation. Yeah. Anything like that is a big pet peeve. And honestly, someone on the plane who really wants to talk a lot, even when you’re giving them the signal that you just want to catch up on the movies you haven’t seen. Forced conversation when you’re stuck next to someone in that situation is not good. I once was on a flight and literally the person would remove my earphones out of my ear and say something, and then every time I watched something, they would literally be like, what’s happening? They would say it out loud, but they have the same screen, the same content on their thing, but they didn’t want to actually turn it on themselves.
10. Who is the last person you FaceTimed?
KS: I FaceTimed my mom. I hate FaceTime. I just think it’s less intimate than an actual phone call. The perfect way to connect with me is get me on a phone call while I’m walking. If I’m on the phone just sitting around, I’m going to be honest, I’m not paying attention. I’m zoning out. If I’m walking, I’m listening to every word. I have a goal, a destination in mind; I’m very engaged. And then by the time the call is over, I’m like, oh, I’m at the place where I want to be. FaceTime to me, no, I don’t want to increase my screen time. I honestly end up looking at myself the entire time, and I don’t want to be looking at myself that much. The entire thing is this technology trying to get us closer, and it’s not. This is not intimacy. It actually feels awful to me, so I don’t like it. My mom will sometimes FaceTime me accidentally and I will accept, but I do not like to FaceTime in general.
AVC: Are you more into texting than calling? I know no one likes to answer the phone anymore.
KS: Yeah, I’m the stereotype of that. I will panic if someone calls me. The worst is if you call and then you don’t leave a text or voicemail, then I’m just like, you got to give some heads up of what’s the vibe. And my mom–English is her second language, so her texts are so scary. She’ll call me with a missed call and she’ll say, “Trouble.” Or “I’m worried,” or “Call me right now.” And then I’ll just be like, oh my god, is it some health thing? And then I’ll call and she’ll be like, “What was the name of that vitamin?” And I’m just like, what is happening? I think that’s the worst side of it. But yeah, I am into texting—and honestly now, I’m moving to the DM because then there’s no obligation to look at the notifications as much, so I like that. We don’t need to be in touch this much. I think we can just stop with most technology other than medical and science innovation. I think as far as everything else, we have reached max efficiency. Let’s just stop at a certain point. We have to slow down. I’m ready for the slowdown period. I don’t need things to get faster or easier to access. I want to be less available. That would feel really nice.
11: What is your earliest memory?
KS: My earliest memory is a traumatic memory: I went to this school in India that had very bad design. There would be glass windows that would open outward and from the classrooms. And I didn’t realize this window was open and we were running and playing and chasing each other as kids—I was probably like five, six years old, and I ran through the glass. I turned a corner and ran through this glass window, and I have a deviated septum from it. And I’ve been on this long path of being like, should I get this repaired? And I’m hearing a lot of mixed messages of how it’ll just go back because it happened at such a young age that it’s not permanently deviated. But I have a very vivid memory of turning this corner and then just something happening.
12: From Alia Shawkat: What dream of yours would you most like to see come true?
KS: Ooh, I love that question. The first thing that came to mind is the most vivid dream I’ve had that actually started as a complete nightmare. I have a lot of those dreams where you almost crash your car and then you wake up or you almost fall and then you wake up. But I had this very unusual dream many years ago in college where I was with a group of friends and they peer-pressured me to go into this scary-looking house. It was very creepy, then this man with a huge machete killed us one by one. And in the dream, I die, I actually get stabbed. But then there was a second half of the dream where my body sank into the ground and I went to what can be described as the afterlife. It was this very idyllic place and everything was a little bit off, like the sky instead of blue was purple. And then my first dog, who I really loved, was there to greet me. He took me to my little cottage where I stayed. And this friend of mine who, when I was very young, passed away, was there and he was just throwing rocks at the lake.
That world just looked so peaceful and idyllic, and it’s a dream I never forgot. It’s the only time I’ve woken up and written down the dream because it was so unusual. It’s never happened again, where [I] die in a dream and the dream doesn’t end, it continues. So, the second half that. [Laughs.] I don’t want to live through the nightmare of the machete killing. But the second half, it was kind of this very peaceful, beautiful European-esque village town. My skin was great, the air was clean, and it seemed really relaxing and peaceful. I guess I just want to escape the reality of 2025. [Laughs.] I would rather die than go through something in this universe.
AVC: And without knowing who we’ll speak to next, what would you like to ask them?
KS: Yes, I was thinking about this. So I’m curious about if they could go back in time and change one event, not a world event, but something that happened to them, what would they change and why?
