Anyone who’s seen Never Have I Ever already knows that Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Freakier Friday) is the best of the best. But now, it’s official: The actor stars in the upcoming dance-based comedy Best of the Best alongside Priyanka Kedia (Everything To Me) and Hasan Minhaj (Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj).
Now streaming on Netflix, the film follows two childhood best friends, Maya (Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Kedia), who join UCLA's competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team, only to discover that the road to winning the US championship is far more raucous and cutthroat than they ever imagined.
“Best of the Best is a film about sisterhood, friendship, and self-acceptance,” says Minhaj, who portrays Hamza Latif, a professor in the film. Minhaj co-wrote the script with Patriot Act collaborator Prashanth Venkataramanujam (Bill Nye Saves the World). Minhaj and Venkataramanujam also produce through 186K Films, along with Jonathan Eirich via Rideback. Ryan Halprin and Ellen Schwartz are executive producers.
“To me, this film is about what it means to be seen,” adds Venkataramanujam.
Best of the Best celebrates the vibrancy of Bollywood fusion dance, the growing pains of young adulthood, and the lasting power of friendship. The film’s robust story is exactly what drew director Lena Khan (Flora & Ulysses) to the project.
“The thing that enchanted me most about the script was that it was seven different movies in one,” Khan tells Tudum. “There’s a dance movie, there’s a friendship movie, [and] there is spectacle and ambition. The biggest thing is that it goes very deep, but also goes very big. So you get a movie that’s really exciting, but also heartfelt. I think sometimes you want to be able to sit down and have a good time that also [feels] really rich, and it gave you that.”
A fierce competition awaits in Best of the Best. Dive deeper into the dance-based comedy below.
After wrapping Patriot Act in 2020, Venkataramanujam and Minhaj felt mentally and emotionally fried.
“Patriot Act was like grad school for doomscrolling. Afterward, we just wanted to do something that was fun and would bring us joy rather than an eventual blood clot, and we had always talked about doing a coming-of-age comedy about South Asian college kids,” says Venkataramanujam. “We were cracking up thinking about all the drama and cliques and gossip, and how intense it all felt at the time. And we eventually realized [that] all roads lead back to the dance team.”
Dance teams have become spaces for South Asian community building and cultural connection on college campuses throughout the US. Drawing from personal experience, Minhaj and Venkataramanujam wrote the film to honor the Bollywood-inspired dance competitions they’d attended while in college — Minhaj at the University of California, Davis, and Venkataramanujam at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“We thought [Best of the Best] could be a love letter to this seminal moment where many people from the South Asian community go to college, and they have this coming-of-age experience where not only their culture is celebrated, but a specific homage to Bollywood dance is celebrated,” Minhaj tells Tudum.
“This college Bollywood-fusion dance circuit is a huge creative outlet for so many South Asians in America. Most of the kids on these dance teams are studying electrical engineering by day, and then doing four-hour dance practices at night,” Venkataramanujam explains. “We wanted this film to introduce the world to our world.”
The collaborative duo also drew inspiration from the 2018 rom-com To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, starring Lana Condor and Noah Centineo. Curled up under a blanket in Minhaj’s basement, Minhaj and Venkataramanujam only planned to watch the first 15 minutes of the film, but found Lara Jean (Condor) and Peter’s (Centineo) romance so compelling that they finished the whole movie.
“We absolutely fell in love with it,” Minhaj recalls. “The tone, the tenderness, [and] the sweetness of it was a huge inspiration that actually shaped a lot of the tone of Best of the Best. There is a tenderness and whimsy to [To All the Boys] that you don’t see in a lot of coming-of-age movies and romantic comedies. It was really incredible.”
Khan meanwhile cites Dope and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as influences for her directorial vision, aiming for a music video aesthetic with fashion that felt more editorial. “Into the Spider-Verse had this slightly subversive vibe,” Khan explains. “It was fresh and cool, but also very funny and heartfelt.”
Grab your dancing shoes: Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix.
