Pittsburgh: Home of Indian Actresses

I recently learned that Aarti Mann, the actress who portrays Priya Koothrappali on CBS’ hit show The Big Bang Theory is from Pittsburgh. Specifically, Ms. Mann moved to Pittsburgh as a toddler, grew up in Mt. Lebanon and Wexford before settling in Fox Chapel, and graduated from Shady Side Academy.



Earlier this television season, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profiled Anisha Nagarajan who played Madhuri on the recently cancelled NBC show Outsourced. Nagarajan grew up in Squirrel Hill and Fox Chapel and graduated from Fox Chapel Area High School in 2002. See a theme here? If you’re a female actress of Indian decent, the road to stardom is through Pittsburgh. Move to Pittsburgh (or even better, be born in Pittsburgh), attend a high school in Western Pennsylvania and a sitcom is in your future!

I understand that some of you may have your doubts about this. You may believe that two Indian actresses from Pittsburgh does not make a trend. I disagree. Mindy Kaling of The Office probably visited Pittsburgh at some point. In addition, Aishwarya Rai, arguably the world’s most beautiful woman, is a Steelers fan.* Trend!



* Ms. Rai's support of the Steelers didn’t seem to come up in the 60 Minutes interview, so I cannot confirm that Ms. Rai is a Steelers fan...except that she is.

Here's footage of the Aishwarya Rai-60 Minutes video: