The ’70s had Saturday Night Fever. The ’80s had Dirty Dancing. The ’90s had Strictly Ballroom. The early aughts had Save the Last Dance. Now, we have Best of the Best, Netflix’s joyful comedy centered on the cutthroat world of collegiate Bollywood-fusion dance.
Billed as Bollywood meets Bring It On (need we say more?), the film follows childhood best friends Maya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Priyanka Kedia), who join UCLA’s competitive dance team, only to have their skills and friendship tested on the bumpy road to winning the U.S. championship. It’s a story about sisterhood and self-acceptance coupled with high-impact, heart-pounding Bollywood dance sequences that are quite literally a feast for the eyes.
With this kind of South Asian representation on a platform like Netflix, the weight of this moment is not lost on Kedia, the project’s rising star. For the actress, it’s an incredible opportunity for audiences on a large scale to see the culture she grew up loving and that represents so much joy. That was immediate from the moment she received the script and saw her whole world reflected on the page.
On the heels of a major summer starring alongside Colman Domingo in Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, Kedia steps into her leading-lady era this month with a performance that is sure to have everyone talking.
This has been a big year for you. You made your feature-film debut in Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi film Disclosure Day and are now leading the Netflix dance film Best of the Best. What impact did Disclosure Day have on you personally and professionally?
That was truly the coolest place to start. I’d done a film before, but it was an indie. This was a whole different scale. Everybody on set either had an Oscar or was nominated for an Oscar, which is really funny, but at the same time, [they]were somehow also incredibly humble and grounded. Steven Spielberg is an angel on Earth. He calls everybody a kid, no matter who they are and no matter how old they are. I asked him why one time, and he was like, “I call everybody kid. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to be kids again. That’s what making movies does for you.”
Colman Domingo is a walking angel on Earth. He carries himself with so much grace and compassion and empathy and understanding, and there’s this warmth that just comes off of him. And honestly, that, to me, was maybe the most inspiring thing that I took away from [the project]because I went from that to Best of the Best, where I was going to be part of leading a movie. To see how important it is for the leads of the film to have that kind of warmth and to set that tone for everybody was so important.
Netflix describes Best of the Best as Bollywood meets Bring It On. How was it presented to you, and what really excited you about the opportunity?
Nobody had to present anything to me. I read the script and was like, “Oh my God, please get me in this room.” I know this world. These are my friends. These are the people I went to high school with. Everything off every page resonated so much, and I was shocked because I’d never read something that was that accurate to my experience growing up and what that world feels like. I immediately called my agent and was like, “I’ll mop the floors. Let me in there.” And she was like, “Why don’t you try auditioning first?” It’s hard to even compare it because I feel like I haven’t seen something exactly like this before. To me, the closest comp was Pitch Perfect in terms of taking something really niche and just fully sending it into that world.
That’s a great comparison. It made me nostalgic for the great dance films of the early aughts. Did you grow up on any dance films?
I grew up on Bollywood, and in Bollywood, everything is a dance movie. I have home videos of me dancing in front of the screen to all of these different Bollywood movies. … A song that I would always dance to, I actually got to dance to [it]in the movie too, so that felt really full circle. But yeah, there’s a whole world to the Bollywood musical. That’s our bread and butter. That’s one thing we know—a musical, a dance movie. A classic is Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. It’s iconic. But honestly, you could almost start anywhere, and it’s just a fun time.
I didn’t realize how massive the collegiate Bollywood-fusion dance world is. Did you do a deep dive into that circuit yourself, and what did you discover?
I grew up dancing Bollywood for fun. I was never that great. It wasn’t a super-technical endeavor, but it was a way to connect with the community and to stay connected to our culture. So my brother and I grew up doing it. I had seen it, so I know this is cutthroat. And that wasn’t even at a collegiate level. That’s just community dance competitions where you’re 11, and it’s like, “Everybody get in line!” I think anybody that’s ever done dance at any point in their life knows how insane it is or even if you’ve done theater or musical theater. It is life or death.
What did the dance prep look like for this?
We had two and a half months of dance training. It started with a few weeks of boot camp in L.A., and that was just me and Maitreyi. We were taking—I don’t even know—eight hours of dance classes every day, six days a week. We would go from contemporary to hip-hop to classical to K-pop to jazz funk. It was like five different dance styles every single day and then also partner work and getting comfortable moving together. … These girls have danced their whole lives together, and we had to build that really quickly. And then we resumed rehearsals in New Jersey for two months. It was two months of a skeleton dance crew, and then the other actors joined.
It’s really fascinating to get to see what a professional dancer has to go through. They are professional athletes. I was bruised everywhere, every day for months. It’s no joke. The hours are long, and you have to relearn how to eat, how to hydrate, how to sleep, how to take care of yourself. I was like, “Are we training for the Olympics?” But I’m really proud. By the end of it, it was very much like, “I did that.” I didn’t even think that was something my body was capable of doing.
Was there a dance number in the film that was particularly challenging for you?
Maybe the wedding dance. That was challenging for a lot of different reasons. That’s the one where I was being thrown up and moved around and all these things. The costume I’m wearing is a real wedding lehenga, not a costume one, so it’s like 10 [pounds]. I tried it right before the cameras were rolling. They were clipping all these things into my hair, and then it’s like, “Okay, go.” But that’s part of the dance world. You just gotta go with it.
On the flip side of that, did you have a favorite dance number?
I loved every single one for a different reason, but I loved the finale [dance]. The energy on set was electric, and there’s that moment in the finale where all of us are in this V formation, and we’re all moving together and battle-crying, hyping each other up. When I think about it, I still get goose bumps. It was such a beautiful moment. It felt like the culmination of everything we’ve been working up toward both as these characters and as actors ourselves.
Anjali has some beautiful looks. You mentioned the wedding look, but take me into these wardrobe fittings. What was that like for you?
Our head of costume design, [Liz Vastola], is incredible. From day one, she was like, “This is a collaboration.” So I would walk into this room full of racks, and she’d be like, “What speaks to you?” We had a lot of fun crafting everything really intentionally together. Anjali starts off in this place where she’s cute, but it’s not screaming personality. It’s not “I know who I am.” There are no big risks being taken in terms of what she’s wearing, and I actually drew on my teenage cousins that grew up in SoCal, even down to how I got my nails done.
In the Bollywood dream sequence where she’s in the blue lehenga, that was a conversation with our director that was really intentional. It is this big dream sequence, and you would think she’d be in this insane outfit, but what she’s wearing is relatively simple for South Asian clothing. But that was intentional because she’s in this dream world. She still doesn’t know who she is. She still doesn’t even fully understand her place in this world that she’s made up in her head. And then once she got her haircut, that was a big turning point for her. That’s when we initiated a shift in her style, and it was like, “Okay, if she’s thinking for the first time about who she is and she’s questioning the roles that she’s played blindly so far, what does it look like for her to start trying to step out of her comfort zone? … What could have been in her closet already that she’s remixing? What could she have thrifted near UCLA?” And from there, we came up with the [looks for the]latter half of the movie. You see her come into style that feels like her.
How was it working with Maitreyi as a scene partner and off camera?
We were trauma bonded instantly. Being thrown into these dance classes together, we would pull up in our matching little cars with our matching bobas, and we’d walk into Millennium Dance Complex in L.A., which is where all the professional dancers train, and we would put our bags down in the back and look at each other like, “Okay, let’s go.” That’s the beautiful thing about dance. … It was almost like we worked our way outside in. We broke this physical barrier so quickly, and a lot of our training, those first couple weeks, was about having to literally physically support each other and hold each other and not let each other fall and to literally lean on each other to our absolute extremes. So we had to build that trust that these girls have immediately from the outside in. We had a lot of fun, and we were the only non-dancers for a really long time. I’m really proud of what we made together.
This film is such a win for the South Asian community. What does it mean for you to be a part of this project?
It means the world. I could not have dreamed of a more special project to get to be part of. Like I said, the second I read the script, I was shocked that this was being made, and then I was shocked that I was being considered for it, and then I was even more shocked that I got to be a part of it. I woke up every single day thinking that maybe I was dreaming, and I would pinch myself. I’ve been a fan of Hasan [Minhaj] since I was a teenager, since I was in middle school. I got a DM from someone when the movie got announced, and they were like, “Oh my God, you’re the one that made us watch his Homecoming King special every time we came over to your house.” I’m like, “Yeah, that was me.” It’s something me and my brother grew up watching together. All of his specials we would watch together. We went and saw his tour like eight years ago when it came through the Bay Area. We were in the back row. I worked at a café that Hasan was a partner in. That was the job I had when I booked the movie, so I had met him a couple times as his barista, and every time, I would totally put my foot in my mouth and not know what to say because I was so starstruck.
Getting to work with someone that I looked up to for so long… There was this day he came up to me on set, and he was like, “Hey, can I get a picture with you?” And I literally just froze. I was like, “Me?” But he and [Prashanth Venkataramanujam] have worked for five years bringing this project to life, and it was never lost on me how special it was that it was landing someplace like Netflix, where it would have that mainstream accessibility. So many people would get to be exposed to it that maybe don’t know anything about South Asian culture, and it could be a really special introduction. Also, for South Asian people, this is a movie that, if I had had growing up, it would have been playing on the TV all day, every day. I’m really excited for South Asian kids, or anybody of any age, to watch this movie and to be able to feel pride in their culture. At the end of the day, it really is just a celebration of South Asian culture, food, music, clothing, everything, friendship.
The bar has been set high with Disclosure Day and now Best of the Best. What are you looking forward to next?
Listen, I feel incredibly blessed. It’s not lost on me any moment of any day. I went to school for theater. I worked three minimum-wage jobs at a time for a couple years after graduating. My life has changed a lot in the last year and in ways I never could have even imagined or anticipated. So I just feel incredibly grateful to be here. I feel really excited that the work I’ve done is also something I can be proud of and something I would have chosen to do regardless. I honestly think that is the most meaningful thing to me, and if I can keep doing work that I’m proud of and that excites me and that challenges me… Our directors said, “Listen, after this movie, you’re gonna feel like you can do anything.” And it’s like, “Yeah! Let me do my own stunts. Let me Tom Cruise it.” Honestly, after doing that, I was like, “Let me jump off a building. I can do it.” I would love to keep learning new skills for things. I think that was so special. I’d love to do a dark comedy. I want to work with Yorgos Lanthimos. That’s my dream.
Best of the Best premieres on Netflix on September 18.
