Still, fame isn’t all bad, even if Suri doesn’t always know what to do with it. On her way into the Los Feliz cafe where we meet, a fan stops to say they love her work. Suri is gracious to the stranger, but she tells me she still feels imposter syndrome, more than a decade into her career. “I fangirl people all the time, so it’s very bizarre for me to think that someone might feel that about me,” she reasons, adding that today's compliment from a fan was especially uplifting after an unnerving audition earlier. “How lucky am I that I can have a sh*tty day and it can be turned upside down because someone watched something that I loved being part of?”
The high she gets from performing has been part of Suri's life for as long as she can remember. The Southern California native started acting in elementary school, after performing a Bollywood dance number set to “Dil Na Diya,” from the Hrithik Roshan film Krrish, at her third-grade talent show. Suri's father immediately clocked her enthusiasm during that short performance, which also featured an acting interlude, and he promptly enrolled her in the John Robert Powers acting academy. Her first role out of the course was in that “tiny thing called Valentine’s Day,” as Rani, a student in Garner’s character’s class.
Though Suri didn’t skyrocket to stardom, her complicated relationship — and at times, straight-up aversion — to fame is, in part, why she’s minimally on social media. The Indian American actor has only 15 grid posts on her Instagram, and rarely posts updates to her IG Story. She’s openly wary of the validation that it all provides, believing “likes” and “follows” only feed the people-pleasing nature in all actors.
“Glamour is so appealing and enticing, but none of it is as gratifying as being on set,” the Gen Z star says. Suri is suspicious of what being chronically online can do to one’s psyche, likening social media stardom to popularity at school: a chase for something that ultimately doesn’t mean that much.
The other part of why she's not often on social media? “When I’m not working, I have a very mundane, boring life,” Suri insists. “I truly have nothing interesting enough to share that I’m like, ‘You guys need to see this.’”
Despite Suri’s public-facing career, her day-to-day life is as normal as an entertainer’s can be. She lives with her close-knit family (including two brothers who work in the family trucking business, a sister who is a nurse, and a dog) in Downey, California, where she grew up, about half an hour from the entertainment industry’s epicenter of Los Angeles. Suri’s path to a creative career was championed, not discouraged, by her immigrant parents. A middle child, Suri's the only one in her family with entertainment ambitions — “I’m the only emotionally distressed one,” she jokes — which helps her keep things in perspective.
Suri wears a full look from Katya Zelentsova; JW PEI boots; Agmes earrings; Jenny Bird ring (right hand); and Sophie Buhai & Erin Fader rings (left hand).Josefina Santos
Suri contends that she’s “just not that interesting,” but it’s her grounded, stable, supportive life that gives her the courage and desire to experiment with the roles she takes on; it drives the responsibility she feels for showing varied depictions of the larger South Asian diaspora. “I'm really interested in playing different characters…. not the same role over and over again,” she says, specifically referencing how many would call the parental support she's had atypical for second-generation kids. “South Asians are all so complex, and I want to stray from the stereotypical narrative that we may have about our families.”
Suri’s roles have been consistent with this desire. After Valentine’s Day, she later starred in the Fresh Off the Boat back-door pilot, Magic Motor Inn, that would have centered on an Indian family that owns a motel had it received a series order. In 2021, she began her stint as Aneesa on Never Have I Ever, playing a cool new Muslim girl at school who experiences an eating disorder, is a star athlete, and later realizes she’s bisexual. On Poker Face, she portrayed a goth employee at a convenience store, and her first leading role came in the 2023 Hindu mythology-inspired horror movie It Lives Inside, directed by Bishal Dutta.
In It Lives Inside, Suri's character, Samidha, feels cultural discomfort and eventual acceptance, which many diasporic kids may relate to — and it's what drew Suri to the part. She connected to the familiar feelings of displacement, alienation, and forced assimilation in America, which echoed her own experience of returning to California after a two-year stint in India during her youth.
