/ Beautiful Beast

by Anokhi Admin

Beautiful Beast

Jan 28, 2014

Beauty and the Beast star Sendhil Ramamurthy talks Hollywood, Bollywood and steering clear of stereotypes.

He may have played a vicious, supernatural beast on The CW’s Beauty and the Beast, but there’s no doubt Sendhil Ramamurthy is one fine-looking hunk of a man. The Tamil-American actor has been making waves in Hollywood and setting hearts fluttering with his chiselled looks, gravelly voice and superb acting.

From geneticist Mohinder Suresh on NBC sci-fi drama Heroes to ambitious CIA agent Jai Wilcox on the USA Network’s spy series Covert Affairs, Ramamurthy has been a staple of the small screen for the better part of a decade.

These days, Ramamurthy plays Gabe Lowen, a district attorney who has been unexpectedly cleared of his beastliness, on The CW’s Beauty and the Beast. This season, the one-time antagonist is helping the show’s titular beauty (Kristin Kreuk) and beast (Jay Ryan) find their happy ending — by taking down the nefarious organization that created these monsters in the first place.

“When I was first approached for the role, I liked it because it’s a normal guy in a supernatural world. So that would have been a different role for me,” the actor recalls. “I had no idea they were going to make Gabe supernatural, but of course, that’s also been a very fun ride.

“I guess you can say I’ve had a very stable or, as some would say, a very boring upbringing,” he continues. “I was loved, had great parents, got the best education money could buy and wanted for nothing, So it’s very interesting for me to explore characters in shows that have no basis in reality, where you need to take that leap of imagination.”

Throughout his career, Ramamurthy has tried to stay away from playing stereotypical South Asian roles.

“I feel like there are already enough constraints in the acting world that you shouldn’t seek out roles that somehow define you as one race, especially since it has nothing to do with your character usually,” he says.

Case in point: his role on Covert Affairs. According to Ramamurthy, the character was supposed to be called Conrad Sheehan who was blond and blue-eyed. After Ramamurthy’s successful audition, Conrad became Jai Wilcox, and aside from his name, “the character wasn’t made any more Indian and race didn’t come up again in the show,” he says.

While he’s enjoying playing intense roles for now, Ramamurthy would love to try his hand at comedy. Of course, he’s already guest-starred on NBC’s The Office as Kelly Kapoor’s boyfriend Ravi and played the love interest in Gurinder Chadha’s rom-com It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.

“Comedy is so much harder and it would be great to get back into that,” he says.

Ramamurthy has also dabbled in Bollywood, starring in the critically acclaimed Shor in the City. After the film’s success, Ramamurthy says he got many offers to go work in Mumbai, but none of them appealed to him. “I’m dying to work in India again but the masala-type song-and-dance movies are not for me.” But he did recently get another opportunity to work with a director of Indian descent in Mahesh Pailoor’s family drama Brahmin Bulls, playing a son constantly at odds with his father (Monsoon Wedding’s Roshan Seth).

Fortunately, Ramamurthy didn’t have much personal experience to draw upon in preparing for the role. He caught the acting bug in the mid-’90s while studying pre-med at Tufts University, after taking a class to fulfill a graduation requirement. When he told his family of doctors he wanted to become an actor, though initially dismayed, they supported him. “They were worried, but they didn’t stop me; like you hear has happened with so many other Indian actors.”

His fans are grateful for that.

BY TAMARA BALUJA