Amita Rao continues to be wacky and empowered in ‘Adults’

And with season two being released last week, we follow a returning main cast of Malik Elassal (Samir), Lucy Freyer (Billie), Owen Thiele (Anton), Amita Rao (Issa), and Jack Innanen (Paul Baker). While the series only has a run of eight episodes, each scene is filled with antics—from acid trips to jury duty—and there’s a lot to be enjoyed within these 20-something minutes. The characters all live in Samir’s parents’ home in Queens, New York (while the show is filmed in Toronto), and are all figuring out their way in the city and how to be adults. No pun intended. 

I recently had the privilege to speak with Rao about Issa’s growth through Rao’s perspective on comedy, friendship, and New York. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Pendhay Yeshay: Given that this show is so relationship heavy, how do you think Issa’s relationships with all these other characters change in the second season?
Amita Rao: I feel like the thing that’s happening in the second season is that the tectonic plates under all the relationships are shifting. In the previous season, Paul Baker had just jumped into the dynamic, he was the new addition and the energy he brought was novel and not stitched in. And now, he's in the group, he's integrated. And there's actually all this tension underneath because these older relationships that are long standing are being challenged. So I think for Issa, she's having these insecurities pop up: questioning her relationship with her best friend, who she thinks might have a crush on her boyfriend, and questioning her relationship with her boyfriend, who she thinks has a crush on her best friend. And so all of this insecurity is manifesting.

PY: I noticed that in the intro for the series, there are a lot of photos of the cast all together, how did those photos come about?
AR: Those were literally our personal photos that we just sent to the show creators during that month of filming or prior to filming. We were just hanging out. They paid for us to go party in Toronto, really getting into character. So yeah, those are all just pictures that we all took while we were hanging out.

PY: I've read that you moved from Chicago to New York shortly after the first season, given that you're now in New York. How do you think the way you portray this young Brown girl in New York has changed? What are some of the elements you  wanted to incorporate?
AR:  I've said that New York is like a pressure cooker for identity. It sands you out in a way that really reveals a raw version of yourself. If you’ve seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s like the beach episode, how they describe the beach and what it does to everyone—it smooths you out and makes you this raw version of yourself. That's what I feel like happens in New York. And I don't necessarily think it becomes smooth and placating, but with all these characters in flux, this environment of the city is heightening the things they're not looking at, in themselves and the tension in their lives. New York just has that effect on people and it ends up spitting out a version of you that’s the most you. And so I think they're all just becoming more themselves.

PY: How have your relationships in your personal life affected the way you portray Issa's relationships with people around her?
AR:  I have such a close-knit group of friends from college that are still friends, and I think what it did was inform the intimacy and the stakes of every situation—like how enmeshed we are in one another's lives, how nosy we are. Especially when it's this platonic-romantic friend group, where people are going in and out—I just think it affected how I played the stakes. It really feels like the most important world inside of it. And I think and it feels like its own world. And I think that's something that (show creators) Ben (Kronengold) and Rebecca (Shaw) do such a good job about where they're like. Yes, these people live in the city. But, what we're actually presenting you and showing you is this slice of their world.

PY: What sort of projects are you really wanting to do? Are you going to focus back on Gag Reflex (your comedic duo with Chelsea Matkins), or do you want to continue in this acting business and go more into standup? What are you feeling?
AR: I want to try everything and anything. I will always do live comedy. For me, it's just like going to the gym, it's a part of my life in such a vital way. So I'll always do live comedy, I'll always perform with Gag Reflex. I feel like right now, I want to try everything, I want to try horror, rom-coms, romance. I love live theater and I've been doing more of that. And I just want to do more standup. That's part of the reason I moved to New York, I love the standup scene in New York.

PY: There's a lot of talk about Adults being the sitcom for Gen Z, amongst other shows like Not Suitable for Work and Overcompensating. Where do you think Adults fits into these expectations of portraying young adult life?
AR: I think where it really shines is the kind of scrambling around ineffectualness that I think all Gen Z people feel, where we're trying to find footing in a world that is constantly shaking. Literally. There are earthquakes and fires. We're trying to find footing in this world that won't slow down or stay still, and I think that's what's in Adults. And I think it’s the fact that Ben and Rebecca, the creators, are actually Gen Z, have the cultural language of Gen Z, and speak like Gen Z. Because I think a lot of those other shows before this era have been not really written by Gen Z. 

PY: Where do you see the show going after season two?
AR: I think in season three, we just hopefully will see more mess, more interlapping in the friend group, more tensions bubbling up between people you don't expect. I think what the show is doing is showing how much friend groups evolve, how much one truth that existed a couple of years ago can change into a completely different truth. And it still doesn't affect the love that's in the friend group. Malik puts it in a really beautiful way where he's like, “What I see happening is there's the same amount of love in the friend group. It's just going different ways.”