Naveen Andrews Doesn’t Believe He’s Sexy

When most people hear the name Naveen Andrews, they think of Lost, the hit fictional TV show where he played Sayid, the brooding, ex-soldier stranded on a mysterious island. But when you ask South Asians, they also think of Kip, the Sikh bomb detonator in The English Patient; Balraj, the dashing eligible bachelor in Bride and Prejudice; Raj Singh, the sexy, dangerous king in Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra; Sunny Balwani, the Theranos investor, in The Dropout; or Hasnat Khan, the doctor and purported lover of Princess Diana, in Diana.

But if you ask Andrews, who was calling in from Santa Monica, which role stayed with him, he didn’t choose one of his most well-known ones, but an early portrayal: Karim, a half-white, half-Indian guy navigating a racist, intolerant U.K., in The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), a mini-series based on British Pakistani writer Hanif Kureishi’s autobiographical novel. “It wasn’t an easy role because it was a character that was very passive,” Andrews told me. “I remember thinking he was almost like a receptacle for other people’s bodily fluids.”

Now, with his newest role, Andrews continues to defy the expectations that others might impose on him. In The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh (2024), a comedy series about an Indian family that has recently arrived in Pennsylvania, Andrews plays Mahesh Pradeep, an optimistic entrepreneur with a SpaceX contract. A Lost fan might struggle to reconcile the smoldering British Indian star with this potbellied patriarch, but never fear, if anyone could make an Indian dad sexy, it’s Andrews.