India, Sept. 23 -- For Priyanka Kedia, South Asian representation has moved beyond simply being visible on screen. The 24-year-old British actor of Indian origin stars alongside Never Have I Ever fame Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in Netflix's Best of the Best, a coming-of-age comedy set in the fiercely competitive world of collegiate Bollywood-fusion dance. Written by comedian Hasan Minhaj and his long-time collaborator Prashanth Venkataramanujam, and directed by Lena Khan, the film draws on its writers' own experiences of growing up in the South Asian diaspora in the US.

What matters to Priyanka Kedia is that its characters are not reduced to that identity. "We all have this common experience of growing up seeing ourselves represented as the b...