What to know
While promoting her Netflix film Best of the Best, the Mississauga-born actor repeatedly described herself as an Eelam Tamil woman and said her country is Canada while her roots are in Sri Lanka — a position she has held publicly since her 2019 breakthrough in Never Have I Ever, when she asked to be described as Tamil-Canadian rather than Sri Lankan.
She also shaped the wording of her character Maya's identity in the film: a scene where Maya corrects someone who assumes she is Indian now carries the line "I'm Tamil. My family's from Sri Lanka." An earlier draft had read "Tamil Sri Lankan"; Ramakrishnan asked for the change so the distinction between her Tamil identity and her family's geographical roots was clear, telling TIME that Tamil Eelam diaspora viewers would recognise the significance of the phrasing.
The Tamil Guardian documented an organised backlash from Sinhala nationalist pages: Sri Lankan social media users were urged to give the film one-star ratings on IMDb without watching it, and at least one page supplied a prepared prompt for followers to generate negative reviews with ChatGPT or Gemini, asking them to post screenshots as proof. Thousands of negative reviews from Sri Lanka followed — driving the film's Sri Lankan IMDb average to 1.1 out of 10 even as 82 per cent of the 17 professional reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive at the time of reporting. Ramakrishnan also faced racist and misogynistic abuse across social media. Her parents fled Sri Lanka's armed conflict as refugees and settled in Canada, and she has long spoken about attending Tamil demonstrations in Toronto with them as a child.
Summary based on Tamil Guardian .
Source checked Oct 7, 2026 · Added to Tamil Directory Oct 7, 2026.