Netflix’s ‘Best of the Best’ Cast Guide (With Photos)

Netflix is heading back to campus this fall with ‘Best of the Best,’ a Bollywood-fusion dance comedy that follows two childhood friends navigating freshman year, family pressure, and a shot at a national title. The film arrives in theaters and on Netflix on September 18, 2026, with Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Priyanka Kedia, and Janina Gavankar leading an ensemble cast. Two childhood best friends join UCLA’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team, only to find that the road to the US championships is fiercer than they imagined.

The project comes from director Lena Khan and writer producer Hasan Minhaj, and it pairs a campus coming-of-age story with the structure of a competition film. Below is a closer look at the key names bringing ‘Best of the Best’ to life, along with what each performer brings to the ensemble.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Maya, one half of the central friendship at the heart of ‘Best of the Best.’ She is already familiar to Netflix subscribers from ‘Never Have I Ever,’ and she recently appeared in ‘Freakier Friday’.

Her prior work as an anxious, ambitious teenager navigating impossible expectations gave her a strong foundation for a story built around friendship and self-acceptance. Maya is written as the friend who pushes toward the audition and the championship, and that kind of forward momentum echoes the energy Ramakrishnan brought to her breakout role.

Both leads completed four months of intensive dance training for the film, a commitment that matters in a story where the characters are meant to be taken seriously as performers. Audiences need to believe both the rehearsal grind and the finished routine, and that kind of preparation is meant to sell both halves of the equation.

Priyanka Kedia

Priyanka Kedia plays Anjali, Maya’s childhood best friend and fellow dance team hopeful. The two characters join UCLA’s competitive Bollywood-fusion dance team only to discover the road to the US championship is far more cutthroat than they expected.

Kedia is a newer face for American streaming audiences, and ‘Best of the Best’ positions her as a co-lead rather than a supporting player. The friendship between Maya and Anjali carries much of the film’s emotional weight, since the story is as much about growing apart and back together as it is about winning a trophy.

Director Lena Khan has described the project as several different movies folded into one, citing the dance movie, the friendship story, and the sense of spectacle and ambition running through the script. Kedia’s performance sits at the center of that balancing act, since Anjali has to carry both the comedic beats and the more grounded family pressure storylines.

Hasan Minhaj

Hasan Minhaj plays Hamza Latif, a professor in the film, and he also co-wrote the script with longtime collaborator Prashanth Venkataramanujam before producing through his company 186K Films. For Minhaj, the setting offered a way to revisit a specific slice of South Asian college life.

Minhaj has said the goal was to make the film a love letter to the moment when many South Asian students arrive at college and experience a coming-of-age story that celebrates both their culture and Bollywood dance specifically. Speaking with Tudum, Minhaj called the film a story about sisterhood, friendship, and self-acceptance.

Minhaj and Venkataramanujam drew on their own college experiences at UC Davis and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, along with inspiration from the 2018 romantic comedy ‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,’ when shaping the film’s tone. That mix of personal history and genre affection runs through Minhaj’s dual role as both cast member and behind the scenes architect of the story.

Janina Gavankar

Janina Gavankar joins the ensemble cast, bringing credits that include ‘Big Sky’ and ‘Borderlands’, along with a longer résumé that spans television drama and genre work. She is also known for ‘True Blood’ and ‘The Morning Show,’ giving her one of the more established profiles among the film’s supporting players.

Gavankar’s casting adds a seasoned presence to a story largely built around young performers finding their footing, both as dancers and as college students. Her background across prestige drama and genre television suggests a character meant to anchor scenes outside the dance floor itself.

She joins fellow supporting cast members Ankur Rathee, Chaneil Kular, Lilly Singh, and Sasha Bhasin as part of the film’s wider ensemble. That breadth of cast reflects the scale of the dance team world the filmmakers wanted to depict on screen.

Chaneil Kular

Chaneil Kular is a British actor born in August 1999, best known to Netflix audiences for playing Anwar Bakshi across multiple seasons of ‘Sex Education’. He studied theatre and film at Bristol University before beginning his acting career.

Beyond ‘Sex Education,’ Kular has appeared in ‘Black Narcissus,’ ‘Bodies,’ and ‘Protection,’ and he took a lead role in the 2023 film ‘Accused’. That range of dramatic and ensemble work makes him one of the more experienced younger actors in the ‘Best of the Best’ lineup.

Kular joins the film as part of a supporting cast built from familiar faces in television, film, and comedy, adding another layer to a dance team ensemble meant to feel lived in rather than assembled purely for spectacle.

With the film’s dance floor drama and college friendships set to play out on screen this month, which member of the ‘Best of the Best’ cast are you most excited to watch compete for the championship?