There are enough outrageously absurd moments in Benito Skinner’s searing coming-of-age comedy Overcompensating to leave your jaw gaping in your chest—used condoms inspected like forensic evidence, glass bottles smashed between barehanded palms, Charli XCX casually asking for cocaine at a college festival, and beer-blasting frat bros going apeshit in a full-blown Freudian phallic showdown. But one of the more pared-back moments in a show that’s so gleefully, unapologetically over-the-top comes when Benny—the main character played by Skinner, a closeted college freshman who is still grappling with his gay identity—first locks eyes with Miles, his will-they-won’t-they romantic interest.
In the middle of a cringey freshman orientation routine, Benny spots the mysterious Miles sauntering across campus with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a hint of a smile flickering across his face. Despite the slow-motion shots and angelic background music, it’s one of those moments that whooshes by faster than you can say “Super Bass.” Yet, Miles walks across with such soft magnetism that, just like Benny, you can’t help but stop and stare. He’s the ultimate Brown boy sex symbol, a heartthrob that doesn’t need a neon sign to cinch the title. Then again, that’s probably because it’s a role Rish Shah, the British-Indian actor who plays Miles, has quite comfortably grown into.
“I think being a heartthrob, it’s something that requires intimacy,” Shah tells Rolling Stone India. “Attraction is something that’s precious—It’s not that I’m not trying to be confident in these characters, I think it’s just [about] bringing a side of sensitivity and empathy that, yeah, I hope translates.” Speaking over a video call, Shah’s eyes light up as he recalls the process of auditioning and shooting for Overcompensating. “I accidentally started a fire and shut down the set [for a day],” he recalls with a sheepish laugh (And no, he doesn’t mean that figuratively—a wet T-shirt and a plugged-in hairdryer actually started a fire). There’s a rare humility and wide-eyed wonder in his voice, as if he’s still wrapping his head around the fact that he’s made it this far.
It’s this grounded charisma that’s defined many of Shah’s roles, from the brooding blue-haired Russ in Netflix’s Do Revenge, the charming Kamran in Ms. Marvel, the earnest younger brother Karim in Riz Ahmed’s Oscar-winning short The Long Goodbye, or the sweet and sympathetic Ravi in To All the Boys: Always and Forever. It hasn’t stopped him from trying out darker, more complex roles, like the tormented Jay—who finds out his fiancée is having an affair with his father in the erotic thriller Obsession—or the morally conflicted Mohammad, a radicalized youth navigating a post 9/11 America in the politically charged indie film The Sweet East, in which he stars alongside Jacob Elordi and Ayo Edeberi.
But in Overcompensating, Shah plays Miles with an endearing awkwardness that’s at once sincere and emotionally elusive. So when he (spoiler alert) suggests a couple’s costume and drops MDMA with Benny at a Halloween party—only to sneak off and hook up with a girl in Benny’s room instead—or kisses Benny’s best friend Carmen (Wally Baram) in a cliffhanger moment that pushes the closeted young adult to reveal his feelings unwittingly, you still find yourself rooting for Miles instead of writing him off as just another fuckboy. [The show] has a very unique and calculated approach to breaking down this world of toxic masculinity,” he points out. “So many people grow up in that environment, so I hold a lot of pride in the fact that I get to play a small role within this path that Benny has created.”
It’s interesting that, despite Shah being an Indian-origin actor (his parents are from Mumbai and Gujarat, and his real name is Rishabh—though he admits that, growing up, he was always afraid the kids at school wouldn’t be able to pronounce it), his South Asian identity never really takes center stage in the show. Instead, he’s simply Miles, a regular British college student trying to fit in at a university populated by dudes who communicate in bird calls, “yees,” and “nahs.” That part, he explains, is very much intentional.
“Although Miles’ identity isn’t outwardly spoken about, I also think that part of the beauty is that we don’t have to deep dive into it for audiences. You know, it’s up to them if they want to do the work themselves, but we don’t have to explain everything about where people come from anymore.” In fact, Shah is part of a growing vanguard of Brown characters on screen who no longer have to explicitly spell out their identity or conform to the tired tropes of doctors, taxi drivers, and comedic punchlines that once defined South Asian representation in films and TV. “I think that’s a great step forward, especially in these sorts of stories. It’s about, I guess, blurring these lines of what identity should look like, and that it doesn’t necessarily have to be this Venn diagram.”
At the same time, though, Shah has slowly learnt to share his culture with those around him, whether he’s making his castmates jam to tunes by Sonu Nigam and Atif Aslam, or getting them to sample Indian food. One of his favorite memories from shooting Overcompensating in Toronto, he says, was taking the cast and crew to this hole-in-the-wall Indian street food spot. “[Most of them] hadn’t [tried this kind of food] before, but we ordered the whole menu. And even Benny, who has had a lot of Indian food before, was like, ‘Where’s my mango lassi?’”
Shah also points out that to embody the teenage heartthrob fantasy energy Miles needed to channel, he drew inspiration from Shah Rukh Khan and the Bollywood romances he grew up watching. Mention Indian artists, and he perks up like someone just hit the play button. Suddenly, he’s animatedly riffing about his favorite indian artists—The Siege, Hanumankind, and Lifafa—like he’s queuing them up in his brain’s hype playlist. “Each of them brings a different kind of vibe, and I’ve been able to lean into them for different roles as well,” he says. “Something I often do is create a playlist for a role and have fun with that before I go onto set.”
While he admits that, as a second-generation immigrant, he once struggled to wear his culture on his sleeve, working on projects like The Long Goodbye with Riz Ahmed, Ms. Marvel with Iman Vellani, and Obsession with Indira Varma gave him the sense of community and camaraderie he needed to feel more comfortable in his skin. “I was louder and prouder when Ms. Marvel happened, of course, more so because I was surrounded by people who look like me in the industry, which, again, is rare,” he points out. “But then I was able to harness that empowerment and take it to other sets.” Working with Varma, especially, was a big one for Shah: they both share a background in theatre, and her presence on set was a stabilizing force for him. When we talk, he’s seated in his childhood bedroom and quickly swivels the camera to show me a poster of Indira Varma in a stage production of Ionesco’s Exit the King, standing out in a sea of others on the wall. “I used to go and watch all these [theatre] shows when I was at uni at King’s College, and stick up all the ones that I thought were the most inspiring. And so for years, I’ve just been staring at her face, and then I got to work with a hero of mine who’s paved the way.”
While Shah never really set out with the intention to subvert South Asian stereotypes, it’s a responsibility he hopes to honor with every role he chooses. He’s careful not to be pigeonholed by his roots, but acknowledges the weight of his culture and the power of representing it on his terms. In fact, right after filming Overcompensating, Shah made his first trip to India in seven years. “Going back to India afterwards, for me, was just kind of the perfect way to decompress. The beautiful thing about India, as you know, is you can sit still for one minute and also see 100 stories [unfolding] in front of you.” From watching street performers at Delhi’s Red Fort and visiting his grandmother in Mumbai, to shopping for Indian clothes in Vadodara and navigating palaces in Udaipur, the trip became a grounding reminder of where he comes from—and how far he’s come. “For me, decompression is to sit back and take in all of these beautiful moments that [are] happening to me.”