In Best of the Best, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia are a step above the rest. Directed by Lena Khan (Flora & Ulysses) and now streaming on Netflix, the film follows best friends Maya (Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Kedia), who join UCLA’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team only to discover that the road to winning a US Championship is far more raucous and cutthroat than they ever imagined.
In many ways, Best of the Best is a Netflix homecoming for Ramakrishnan, who was catapulted to fame after playing teenager Devi Vishwakumar in the dramedy Never Have I Ever. In Best of the Best, Ramakrishnan’s character, Maya, graduates from high school adolescence into the growing pains of young adulthood.
“I feel like coming back to Netflix has the same energy as Pitbull’s I’m Back Tour,” Ramakrishnan tells Tudum. “I’m so grateful to be able to bring Maya to life because there’s so much to work with. She’s equally confident as she is anxious and vulnerable, and she’s someone who is so creative and so self-assured while also being a little bit of a house of cards.”
The story, from co-writers Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam (who previously worked together on Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj), celebrates the vibrancy of Bollywood-fusion dance. But at its core, the film is about sisterhood, friendship, and finding self-acceptance.
As lifelong friends, Maya and Anjali are closer than close. As the film’s opening sequence shows, they’ve grown up practically inseparable. “Maya relies on Anjali for unconditional support, and Anjali relies on Maya to break out of her shell and try new things,” says Kedia. “They’re almost like two halves of a whole. They push and ground each other.”
Still, a key part of Best of the Best is about the two exploring their identities beyond their friendship — especially Anjali, who grew up a strict rule-follower and wants to find her own way.
“She’s used to doing what everyone else tells her to do and not really questioning what that means or what she actually wants,” Kedia explains. “I think she’s coming into college really excited to have a free space.”
Kedia felt singularly connected to the role of Anjali because she walked a similar path. “I have been her, and I still am her in lots of ways,” she says. “I came into college being very used to doing what everybody else did.”
True friendship endures all, of course. For Ramakrishnan, the onscreen duo’s sisterly bond manifests in their distinct style of dance, consisting of moves that keep them constantly in contact. “[It’s] this intertwined, interwoven signature thing,” Ramakrishnan notes.
Kedia adds, “We physically were leaning on each other and holding each other up in these duets.”
To pull off the stellar dance sequences featured throughout the film, Kedia and Ramakrishnan underwent four months of dance boot camp. They spent 14-hour days in dance studios like Millennium Dance Complex and Movement Lifestyle Studio in Los Angeles. They also found their footing in private lessons from the film’s choreographers, Phillip Chbeeb and Makenzie Dustman.
“I’ve never been this fit in my life,” says Ramakrishnan, who didn’t have any dance experience before signing on to play Maya. In fact, the actor was apprehensive about trying out for the role but still convinced herself to do it. “I think my superpower is that I don’t know when to quit. I’ll always go down fighting, so when it came to that dance audition, I was like, ‘You know what? At least for this hour that I have, I will be the best dancer I can possibly be and let delusion just carry me through.’”
Kedia, on the other hand, had done some Bollywood dancing in her youth — though not to the extent of what’s featured in Best of the Best. So showing off her moves in front of her co-stars, many of whom are professional dancers, was all the more nerve-racking. Thankfully, she had a friendly audience.
“I remember dancing in front of them for the first time, and they were screaming and cheering, and they were like, ‘You got this. Don’t even think twice about it,’” Kedia recalls. “Just the most supportive, beautiful energy in the room.”
As a result of that extensive dance training, Kedia pushed herself to do things she never thought possible, like nailing a difficult flip during a performance with co-star Ankur Rathee (Single Papa, Shehzada). “I remember pulling that off for the first time and being like, ‘Whoa, I can do that. That’s crazy.’”
Similarly, Ramakrishnan found herself going beyond her perceived limits during a finale sequence, which called for a slide like the kind seen in Mission Impossible. “I remember the choreographer said, ‘For this shot, we’re just going to use the doubles,’” she recounts.
But Ramakrishnan was determined to put her newfound skills to good use. “I said, ‘Hey, if it doesn’t inconvenience anyone or time on set, I would love to just do this move myself because months ago I was never physically able to do this move. But now that I’ve trained my body to be able to do something like this, I’d like to do it.”
Chbeeb and Dustman gave Ramakrishnan the go-ahead, and a portion of her stunt even made it into the final cut. “There’s a very quick second [where] you can actually see my face [as I’m] bending backwards on this moving wall, sliding onto the ground, and then picking myself back up before the next mark,” Ramakrishnan says.
Watch Ramakrishnan and Kedia hit their marks in Best of the Best, which is streaming now on Netflix.
