An Indian among Heroes in top-rated US show

WASHINGTON: It hit him a couple of weeks ago when he was driving down the celebrated Sunset Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. Sendhil Ramamurthy stopped at a traffic light, looked up, and saw his face staring down at him from the billboard publicising the new NBC series, Heroes.

“I wasn't ready for it,” he says. Two weeks and 27 million viewers later, Sendhil still “can’t get used to it.” “This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to me,” he says.

It could well be one of the biggest shows to happen to NBC, too, currently ranked a distant third among the three major American broadcasting networks — CBS, ABC and NBC. The official TV ratings by Nielsen put the viewership of Heroes at 14.3 million on the opening night last Monday making it the highest watched TV show in the US that evening.

This week, the viewership figures were 13 million, making Heroes one of the most watched shows in the US currently.
Sendhil plays the lead role of Mohinder Suresh, a genetics professor at the University of Madras whose father’s disappearance leads him to uncover a secret theory — there are people with extraordinary abilities living among us.

“It was extraordinary that I got the role,” he recollects, “because the original character was written for a 55-year-old. My agent forced me to audition for it, and when I saw the script, I was like ‘Am I in the wrong audition’.”

He was not, eventually. The show’s creator Tim Kring changed the role to fit the 30-year-old Sendhil. From a 55-year-old genetics professor, Mohinder Suresh became a professor-turned-taxi driver. “The role was such great work of script writing that I just had to do it,” he says. “It was an amazing turn of events.”

Once in, his biggest problem was his accent — he just could not get the Indian accent right. Sendhil was born in Chicago to a doctor couple originally from Bangalore, and spent most of his life there before moving on London to study acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He was groping in the dark until he was recommended an online voicebank developed by the University of Kansas. “I could finally understand the nuances of the Indian accent,” he says.

But not before changes in the script forced him speak in Indian, Indian-British, British-Indian and finally British accents. “I had to learn and unlearn a lot,” he says.

He is quite used to the rigours of acting. Before getting small roles in other top-rated shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Numbers, Sendhil began his career as a stage actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company on West End. His first role was in A Servant of Two Masters directed by Tim Supple. “Stage is what I will enjoy the most, now and forever,” Sendhil says. “It has given me the best possible training.”

That training helped him cope with television’s demands. “If I am not shooting, I am doing publicity shoots. Aznd I am not doing that, I would be doing something else that the network wants,” he says.

It’s not that it’s all work, and no benefits. He has just started receiving fan mail, all of it from women across the US. “The only man in the pile of letters was a guy called Don from Pennsylvania,” he says. No go for the women, though. He is married to Olga Sosnovska, a Polish-British actress he met at drama school, and the couple has a one-year-old daughter. they live in Los Angeles.

His celebrity and proximity to Hollywood has meant that he is being approached for roles.

“People have been kind enough to offer me roles, but they need to be substantial. I think Hollywood has matured enough to offer Indian Americans roles that are mainstream. Kal Penn acted in Superman Returns, and Jay Chandrasekhar directed The Dukes of Hazzard and Beerfest. I guess it is a matter of time now before we do a starring role.”