"I've tried to always have my work speak for itself"
Netflix’s His & Hers is the latest psychological thriller rising up the charts and among the cast is Sunita Mani.
The show centres around the grisly murder of a woman in the sleepy Georgia town of Dahlonega.
Journalist Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) looks for answers while her estranged husband, Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal), is also investigating the murder.
Anna and Jack are strangely suspicious of one another.
Sunita plays Priya, a new detective who brings a sharp quirkiness to the job that her more experienced partner, Jack, finds both endearing and annoying.
For some viewers, Sunita first caught attention in 2014, when she brought the house down in the music video for ‘Turn Down for What’.
Others discovered her in the neon-soaked wrestling rings of GLOW or the high-stakes digital world of Mr Robot.
Born in Dickson, Tennessee, to Indian immigrant parents, Sunita Mani’s path to Hollywood was shaped by a mix of rigorous academic curiosity at Emerson College and a love for the unconventional.
Before her breakout roles, she was a fixture of New York City’s alternative comedy scene, most notably as a member of the Cocoon Central Dance Team.
That background in physical comedy and absurdist performance gave her a rare edge, allowing her to convey emotion with her whole body.
Reflecting on her early breakout as Arthie Premkumar in GLOW, Sunita said:
“There was a four-week training period, but I was two weeks late because I was working on a different job.
“I was nervous walking into that room, intimidated by the fact that the other girls had already been there for two weeks, it was like walking into a new high school.
“And you see them in the ring helping each other stretch and telling each other inside jokes.
“But when I get there, it’s just open arms. It was the most loving, trusting, and supportive environment I’ve ever been in.
“The other girls pushed me to be fearless. They were taking everything that was thrown at them and going for it, throwing themselves at the ropes and jumping off them.
“We were in each others’ armpits, holding each other by the neck, farting on each other – there was no time to be uncomfortable or self-conscious.”
And when it comes to representation, she said:
“I think I’ve spent a lot of time in my onstage career trying to do the unexpected and trying to shirk away from labels or the representation of what I’m doing even if I might be one of the few people of colour or one of the few women on stage.
“The comedy scene is a lot of straight white men when I was coming through. Just by being there, it felt like a big deal.”
“But I’ve tried to always have my work speak for itself and make waves that way.”
Sunita Mani has also had film roles spanning genres.
In 2020, she starred in the supernatural horror Evil Eye, which centres on Pallavi, a woman who has a close but contentious relationship with her mother Usha.
Worried for her unmarried daughter, and interested in Vedic astrology, Usha tries to set Pallavi up on arranged dates.
She played Arundhathi Gavaskar in the 2025 rom-com A Nice Indian Boy.
Sunita appreciated that the film wasn’t a coming-out story:
“We’re dropped in the middle of this family’s journey, and it’s really nuanced to do that.
“We’re not centring the conflict around a coming-out story. We’re in the middle of how this family is and will change over the course of 90 minutes.”
His & Hers is already prompting discussion over who is responsible for the murder but for Sunita Mani, it adds to her variety of acting roles, both in film and TV.
Watch the His & Hers Trailer
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