Hasan Minhaj And Prashanth Venkataramanujam Were Burnt Out After ‘Patriot Act’ And Wrote A Teen Comedy

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 09: (L-R) Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam attend Netflix’s “Best Of The Best” World Premiere at Park Lane Hotel on September 09, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/WireImage)

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At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix canceled its Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj after six seasons. Minhaj and his writing partner, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, who also served as executive producer on Patriot Act, were tired and burned out from the difficult topics the political series tackled and the endless research required for each episode. The Emmy Award-winning series took a toll on the writing duo as each episode went through strict measures to be accurate and thoroughly researched.

“Doing an episode of Patriot Act required 200-300 pages of research or 300-400 pages of footage, massive research books, research terms, and making sure we’re argumentatively tight, and saying something new,” Venkataramanujam said over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “It was a very acidic process in many ways. You’re constantly in your head. We just wanted our next project to be fun. We wanted it to come from a place of joy.”

The next project turned out to be the teen/college comedy Best of the Best — out now on Netflix.

Directed by Lena Khan, Best of the Best centers on the competitive and cut-throat world of collegiate Bollywood-Bhangra dance competitions. The story stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia as childhood best friends adjusting to their first year at UCLA, where they join the UCLA elite Bollywood dance crew, Agni. With its friendship storyline and dance competition, Best of the Best could be compared to 2000s-era films like Step It Up, Bring It On, Pitch Perfect, and Mean Girls. Minhaj jokingly said during the Netflix Upfront presentation for the film that he is in his “Tina Fey teacher era.”

Venkataramanujam added 2019’s Booksmart to the list, but he says the biggest inspiration came from 2011’s Bridesmaids. Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s script was a “massive influence” on the 39-year-old executive producer. He comments, “Bridesmaids isn’t like what people said, ‘It’s the female Hangover,’ but it’s not. It’s a totally different movie. The [characters] have a deep love for one another while also being wickedly funny. You don’t have to lose the essential heart of a movie just because the characters are super funny. The way they are funny can be very different. I loved the different ways in which Bridesmaids showed a female friendship on the rocks and how they brought them back to their original love for one another and how they arc that [story] out.”

Minhaj and Venkataramanujam could have easily made the story for two “Bollywood bros.” Venkataramanujam chuckles, “Everyone thinks of us, and they go, ‘Those are some bros’.” He makes it clear that neither he nor Minhaj were Bollywood dancers or on any team. Venkataramanujam was actually on the all-male South Asian a capella team, Chai Town, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He admits that a story about a cappella has been done, but it’s not as interesting as the ecosystem in the collegiate dance world.

The two had many different ideas for the possible story. They thought it could be a “solo fish out of water” story, an ensemble piece, or a friendship story between two men or two women. They eventually settled on two women in a Bollywood dance competition.

“When we were thinking about what fundamentally makes a great story, we thought about the stakes,” says Venkataramanujam. “Not just external stakes, but the internal ones. When you’re thinking of characters that have the most at stake in dance, it’s specifically [important] for South Asian women. When it comes to Indian and South Asian culture, dance is so central to their upbringing.”

For South Asian women, dance has been part of their cultural norm and upbringing – not to mention, a rich part of their history. Minhaj noticed that male and female captains anchor the collegiate Bollywood dance teams, but when it came to classical Indian dance from the diaspora – specifically Bharatanatyam and Kathak – women mainly did it at a young age.

“We thought it would be an incredible story device to not only have two family friends be [like] sisters, but through their relationship as being two families that grew up together, they have the added pressure of having done classical dance from an incredibly young age,” Minhaj explains. “That became this brilliant story device that we used through found footage of them doing Bharatanatyam and Indian classical dance from a young age. [It had] stronger stakes.”

Venkataramanujam states a story like this for South Asian girls – especially in the diaspora – hasn’t really been told that centers two childhood best friends, dancing, beauty standards, social status, and more. That’s how Maya (Ramakrishnan) and Anjali (Kedia) came to life.

“We just found ourselves caring so much more about what happens to Maya and Anjali on the dance team rather than two guys,” Venkataramanujam reveals. We just ran with it.”

Minhaj and Venkataramanujam don’t have the experience of a young South Asian woman, so they relied heavily on their collaboration with director Lena Khan and their stars Ramakrishnan and Kedia—Minhaj shares that Khan and Ramakrishnan gave them notes, and they’ve had to make changes.

“We were integrating notes and changing stuff specifically when it came to the friendship dynamic and how the sisterhood would play out between Maya and Anjali,” Minhaj admits.

The two writing partners always had the base planned out – two characters within an ensemble of funny characters that have always existed since their initial planning. Minhaj was the biggest draw for the studios and initially had a larger storyline for his character. Still, as time went on, he stepped back, turning into the Tiny Fey character he’s always envisioned himself to be.

“We were going through the writing process and focused on the coming-of-age story because, at this point, Hasan is an elder statesman of the culture,” Venkataramanujam laughs. “That was one of the biggest changes from the original script, whittling down Hasan’s storyline so it gave us more real estate for Maya and Anjali over the course of the story.”

Minhaj and Venkataramanujam could have easily written other stories related to their lives – especially with Minhaj’s interesting stand-up stories. His love story with his wife could have been a relatable romantic comedy. But Minhaj really wanted to tell a coming-of-age story that also would be a great comedy. He reflects on his own college days of going to Bollywood dance competitions and how he felt an immense amount of joy, whimsy, humor, and even a budding romance during that time, which he believes “perfectly captured what the diaspora was doing in college within the American zeitgeist.”

“It felt like for years we were hiding this part of ourselves as we entered adult life with work and family commitments,” Minhaj says. “Then this part of ourselves that includes the music that we grew up listening to and the VHS cassette tapes that we watched at home were all put to the side. Competitive collegiate Bollywood dance and culture shows put those things center stage. This was very cathartic for a lot of us to tap into that feeling of something that felt like a huge part of our life – but a secret – that we now get to share it with the rest of the world, and to celebrate the thousands of kids that have participated in these types of shows.”

Venkataramanujam really wanted this film also to be a launching pad for all these South Asian actors – which they got to feature in the film – and the one sole white guy (Nico Greetham) who was stereotypically on the dance team (a trope that is very real). Venkataramanujam laughs, “You got to come correct with leaning into some of these tropes, so that it’s part of the canon.”

The writing and creation process for the two was an “aspirational joy,” because they were so beaten down by the stress of writing Patriot Act and the pandemic, they just wanted to write something that came from a place of love and happy memories.

“Because COVID was so brutal on everyone, it makes sense that in a time of desperation and solitude, you’re almost wishing for this type of community,” says Venkataramanujam. “When we were all isolating, this movie was made out of wanting to bring as many people as possible together. I’ve never actually even articulated that to myself until just now. As I’m psychoanalyzing myself, I’m realizing that probably had a really big part of it.”

Best of the Best is out now on Netflix.