Name: Sasha Bhasin
Hometown: Wellington, Florida
Current role: Praveena in XO, Kitty Season 2, now on Netflix
Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?
Sasha Bhasin: “Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted. When I first became an actor, that was the first monologue I had ever done when I was 17. I did that whole thing where she's talking to Daisy. That very intense monologue from them. I'm sure it's on YouTube somewhere. [I was just] trying to perform to get an agent. I think there's a lot of freedom in not caring what people think about you. I mean, the character was a psychopath, to be fair, but there's freedom in doing as you please, and I think that's really cool."
Sasha Bhasin doesn't know how to sit still. "I'm in L.A. right now but heading to New York tomorrow finally, and then it's off to Mexico," she says, trying to find the best angle to prop her phone up for the perfect Zoom framing. She settles on the kitchen table and sits comfortably, cross-legged, in a fluffy white chair. She keeps readjusting her position all throughout our hour-long chat, sometimes jumping up to show little details, like the Hollywood sign peeking through her window. It's early December, and Bhasin is enjoying the calm before the storm. The storm in question is the release of XO, Kitty season 2, in which Bhasin plays Kitty's (Anna Cathcart) new love interest, Praveena.
Much like Praveena on screen, Bhasin oozes confidence and charisma. Growing up in Florida by way of New York, Bhasin always felt an itch for acting. "I always liked being in a spotlight. I always liked performing for my family," she says. She never really thought of it as a viable career — that is until Selena Gomez released "Who Says" with The Scene in 2011. "I'm going to be so real with you; that song changed my life," Bhasin admits, humming the chorus. “I'm being so serious. After that, I spent hours Googling: 'How did Selena Gomez do this?', 'How did Miley Cyrus do this?'”
Her sleuthing paid off, and she finally found a Disney Channel open call in Virginia. "I cried to my mom one day. We were in Florida at the time, and I was like, 'We can drive. Please, please, please take me there. This is all I want to do.'" After days of wailing, her mom finally gave in, so they packed up the car and set off on their little road trip without telling Bhasin's father, who was "really against the whole concept of acting" then.
When they arrived, Bhasin, who was around 11, recalls seeing thousands of kids with the same thespian dreams. She and her mom waited in line for hours on end until she was given a script from Good Luck Charlie to memorize. The unknown child to Disney star transition was all going according to Bhasin's plan… until the actual audition started. "I got into that room, and I froze," she says, trying to replicate her facial expression from the time. “I froze completely. I'd never taken an acting class. I was so nervous.”
It took Bhasin a while to break that cycle and manifest her inner confidence outwardly. “It wasn't until I moved to New York for college and I went to NYU that I really found my voice, and I [realized] that not only that I really want to do this, [but also that] I'm, actually, maybe good at it,” she says. "I started to get more empowered being in front of people and being seen. I think that is a big part, especially in the world we live in where everybody's seen on social media, we're so exposed, but at the same time, in person, nobody wants to say anything to each other.”
At NYU, Bhasin studied politics, but now that she had broken out of her shell, her mind was somewhere else. She skipped econ to go see plays, or take improv classes. “I was just really trying to consume as much of this rich culture that New York has,” she says. “It's my favorite place in the world. I can't wait to go back. So, what did I study in school? I couldn't tell you. I didn't.” Instead, she’d memorize entire textbooks days before an exam. Still, she graduated and, with all the memorizing she did for her tests, she was unknowingly also flexing skills that would come in handy as an actor. "Acting memory," she says, clicking her tongue. "I graduated into this weird pandemic space and took my graduation pictures at Taco Bell because that's pretty much all I ate for four years of school. It was stupid, but it was fun. I don't eat fast food as much now, but back then, I was eating chalupas every day.”
While finding her groove in the city, Bhasin also "finessed" an agent. "I guess doing Angelina Jolie monologues," she quips. Her first audition after the failed Disney one was for a Tarte commercial. She booked the job. It was not only a tremendous financial push for her but also proof for her parents that this was a viable career and not just a dream.
"It was kind of a nudge from the universe or a nudge from whatever that this could work," she says. “When I'd come home on breaks, I'd just be reading up on my Stanislavski, trying to learn as much as I possibly could because the students in Tisch were working eight hours a day on their acting, and in my head, I was like, 'Damn, I really got to do the same thing on my own time because I don't have that.'”
New York City is the backdrop for many of Bhasin's acting firsts, and XO, Kitty would be no exception. She had landed a post-grad job in tech and hadn't done an audition in months when the role came up. "At the time, the character's name was Priya," Bhasin recalls. “I took a look at it and in the back of my head, I was like, 'I'm not going to get this.' I've done a million [of auditions for] this type of character where it's like a person of color, queer, cool girl thing, which, thank goodness, is now becoming a more common archetype of a character that is incorporated into shows.”
She had watched the first season and loved TATB so, fully convinced the answer would be a no, she made the trek to a friend's apartment and asked them to help her read the part. "I did it in maybe 20 minutes, and it's not because of lack of work; it's because I've prepared this character before. I know this character," she says. “After I recorded it, I watched it and I was like, 'Damn, this is a really good tape.' And then I got a callback.”
After that, she met with casting director David Rapaport and showrunner Jessica O'Toole on Zoom to do the same scene. The call lasted five minutes. She got some corrections. Soon, she was reading with Cathcart over Zoom. "I was like, 'Oh, she's so gorgeous. I love this girl. She's the best.' We read our scenes together, and it went great." (After booking the role, O'Toole told her they loved how she made Cathcart "'flustered.”)
Nothing was official yet, but Bhasin had a gut feeling that the deal was done, which felt cathartic in more than one way. "I had been auditioning for years, and the one time, I'm like, 'Eh, forget it. It's not going to happen.' It did," she says. Still, she needed to take her mind off things before the call that would solidify her feelings arrived, so she took herself to the movies. "I do that a lot in New York. I'll just go watch a movie by myself. Then I can really focus. I find it hard to focus if I'm watching movies at home," she explains. “So I went. I'm watching Love Lies Bleeding, which was amazing. Kristen Stewart was fabulous in that. And as I'm going, the movie ends. I'm in the bathroom, literally in the bathroom. My agent calls me. I'm answering at the Regal Cinema in Union Square. And they are like, 'You are [the] producer's choice.'”
Just days later, for a total of two weeks since her first audition tape, she was on a plane to Seoul with Joshua Lee, who plays Jin, another new addition to XO, Kitty season 2.
During the flight (her first one to Asia since being born in India and leaving at just a couple of months on), Bhasin decided to fill a gap in her filmography and watch the whole Matrix series. "I had never seen them," she confesses with a smile. But not even watching Keanu Reeves for 16 hours could stop her mind from spiraling. "I had an anxiety attack on the plane," she says, her tone getting a little more stern. "I was in my little business class seat that Netflix got for me, just crying and just shaking," she continues, now getting more animated. "It's such a shift of life; it's one of those things where it's the most amazing thing that could ever happen to you, but it's also the scariest thing possible."
After landing, Bhasin and Lee were greeted by the rest of the cast in the hotel where they were all staying, and they immediately went out for pancakes nearby. "I felt so lucky because everyone was just so cool. It didn't feel like, 'Oh gosh, I'm coming into their territory.' It was more like, 'Okay, let's make something together, which is really fun.' This is the first TV show I've ever done and it's of this caliber? It's unbelievable,” she says. “But I've made lifelong friends from the show. I'm starting a podcast with Regan [Aliyah], who plays Juliana. She's one of my closest friends now. I'm seeing Josh tomorrow back in New York. I just felt so lucky to be joining such a humble, fun, cool, and spunky cast."
She arguably does not get much time on screen during the season, but when she does, Praveena steals the show with punchy one-liners, a mysterious aura, plenty of flirting, and even some Korean. To prepare for the role, Bhasin, alongside all the non-Korean-speaking actors on the show, took language classes every day. "I don't remember any of it now," she says with a laugh, "but I do have my flashcards, so I do want to brush up on that. I'm also trying to learn French on Duolingo."
But having a shared penchant for learning foreign languages was not what connected her most to Praveena. "I was over the moon to be playing an openly queer hot cool girl character," Bhasin says, "especially being Indian, where openly queer relationships are not really fully accepted still — though it's gotten better over the years."
"I also thought it was really cool that being Indian wasn't the trope," she adds. "You know what I mean? It wasn't the focus. She just happens to be an Indian girl who's queer. It really felt organic and didn't feel like anybody was trying to check a box. I'm so grateful that I'm able to play a character like that." As many characters mention during the show, if anything, her trope is being too cool — which Bhasin agrees with.
One of the main turning points for Praveena, who's mainly presented as a go-with-the-flow optimist, is finding out Kitty kissed Yuri while they were supposed to go on a date. But unlike Praveena, Bhasin can't hold any resentment towards our titular girl.
"[Kitty] just has such a big heart," she says in exasperation. "She can make all the mistakes in the world and jump from this person to that person, but you can't help but not love her and relate to her and the messiness and the confusion. When she has a feeling, she acts on it. She is not afraid to say how she feels to anyone, even if it's inappropriate, so I can't say, 'Oh, Kitty didn't do that right. She should have treated Praveena better.' Do I think they would've been a hot couple? Yes. Do I think they would've eaten down that Winter Ball scene? Absolutely. But Kitty's just so lovable. So it's like, 'Kitty, come on, get your sh*t together, girl' — [in a loving way]."
As an outsider, though, Bhasin knows where her heart lies for Kitty’s romantic future. "I have been a Kitty-Min Ho stan from day one," she says, emphasizing every syllable. "I love the enemies-to-lovers thing. Honestly, though, with Kitty, I don't think she'll ever be tied down. I liked her and Yuri together. I thought that could have been fun… In a strange way, [I see] Kitty and Juliana because they are true enemies to lovers. That would be a crazy twist. But now Juliana is Praveena's girl, so if Kitty steals her again, we're going to have a problem.”
XO, Kitty season 3 is still up in the air — but if the show does get renewed as many expect, Bhasin would love for people to see more of Juliana and Praveena on screen together after the bomb reveal in the last episode of season 2. "Regan [and I] got close very fast because we're all living together and working together and seeing each other all day," Bhasin says. “By the time we had read the script [where our characters get together], we were already really tight. We looked at each other and were like, 'Yeah, this is good.' And it makes sense for the characters. Juliana is the cool art girl, and Praveena is the cool CIA-type girl. It makes a lot of sense.”
"If there's a season 3, in my ideal world, it's like Juliana and I are in this fun relationship like honeymoon space," Bhasin continues. “Then you get to know Praveena a bit more, a little bit more about where she's from, how she is like this, why she is always so cute and has the cutest shoes and outfits. I just want to get to know Praveena a little bit more in relation to the other characters. She's gone to this school before. We kind of got the inkling that her parents are CIA. What is that about? I would love to see that. I would love to see her be really integrated into the friend group and really see her in relation to other characters — and see her make up with Kitty. I hope that Praveena and Kitty can be friends.”
Until that can become a reality, Bhasin is staying booked and busy. Also in January, she will be appearing in five episodes of new medical drama The Pitt, now streaming on Max, as well as gearing up for the premiere of her first feature film, Brave the Dark. "January is going to be crazy," Bhasin says, barely holding in her excitement. In between all that, she's also been working on an EP, which is the reason why she's jetting off to Mexico soon after her NYC stopover since one of her friends from college is a producer and has a studio there.
"I have always wanted to make music. I just thought that this was one of those things that was not for me. Other people could do it. I can't," Bhasin says. “[But] the cast of XO, Kitty, Josh and Regan specifically, [were] so inspiring. Being around such talented people who are so brilliant and just do anything that they want to do, I was inspired. I've always wanted to dance and sing and be in this field, but in my head, I was like, 'No, I'm just an actor.' And these are just self-imposed limitations.”
Though the recording has not even started yet, Bhasin is already thinking of the total tracks — "six to eight" — and the Fiona Apple-inspired music videos to go along with them. Even through the tiny Zoom square of her phone, her positivity is infectious. "I want to do that because anything is possible. So what the hell? Why not?" she says, asking no one in particular before grounding herself again.
“I also need to make a new vision board because, thank God and the universe, all the stuff I've put on my vision board now I have. I do it every year,” she continues. "Korea was on my vision board, Netflix was on my vision board. HBO Max was on my vision board…" Her trailing off comes to a halt. "I'm just so lucky that everything that I really wanted and worked towards has happened. Now, it's about planning. What else do I want, and how else can I do things for others? Being on XO, Kitty is amazing, but that's not the end-all-be-all of life. As humans, we all have a responsibility to each other and the planet. Now that I have this semi-platform, [I want to see] what I can do with it and how I can change people's lives. How can I impact the world in whatever way that I can?" she says — and now it's clear the question is for herself.
