Mean Girls is a film that’s so firmly lodged in pop culture that even its supporting characters are easily memorable. Late last year, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to learn how to book bind when she enthusiastically recommended that I check out Rajiv Surendra’s videos on HGTV’s YouTube channel. “Remember Kevin G, the Indian guy from Mean Girls? He does all these DIY videos now,” she said. After a quick search and a few trips to the art store, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself successfully following his 40-minute “Bookbinding for Beginners” tutorial, guided by Surendra’s unbridled joy and first-hand experience with the craft.
A quick scroll through the 34-year-old’s Instagram page will give you an idea of the range of his skills, which includes painting, pottery, calligraphy, and playing the harp. It’ll also give you an idea of how ripped he’s gotten. Whether it’s hand-lettering storefront signs, throwing clay on kilns, or copying paintings in the MET, there seems to be little Surendra can’t do. The Toronto-native, who is based out of New York City, likens the process of finding new hobbies to trying on shoes: “Sometimes you’re like, I don’t like these, why did I ever buy them? or you realize, wow, these are great and the more you wear them, the better you feel,” he says, speaking with a self-assuredness similar to the character we all know him for playing. Surendra arrived promptly to our meeting on his bicycle, sporting a leather jacket paired with a lion shaped Thom Browne bag. “I bike everywhere,” he said as we headed inside, “I have places to go. I can’t rely on the subway.”
How exactly did he go from scene-stealing in Mean Girls to becoming a modern day Renaissance man? GQ talked to Surendra over a coffee in Williamsburg about his reputation as “Martha Stewart” on set, dealing with a life-altering rejection, finding joy in leisure and work, and launching his own YouTube channel.
GQ: What was your favorite memory from the Mean Girls set?
Rajiv Surendra: Tina [Fey] and Amy [Poeler] pulled me aside just as we were about to shoot the rap. We were getting ready for me to go on stage, I was wearing all this heavy bling that the props guy had hung on me. I was wearing this baggy velour suit and they were like come with us and they hijacked me. They took me to some abandoned classroom in this high school we were shooting in and they were like, ok let’s go through it together.They were coaching me. But the etiquette on set is that they aren’t supposed to do that. Tina was the writer. The director is the one that’s supposed to give all direction.
I was like why are they doing this? It’s just some silly rap. I didn’t know that they knew that it was a big thing and they knew it was going to be a big thing. I just thought it was going to be a silly piece of comedy. I think Amy wrote it or Tina wrote it and Amy helped her with it but they were so passionate about it. I couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t until the movie came out that I understood. They knew that that was something the audience would really like. They knew it was important that I did it a certain way.
What’s your personal favorite line from the film?
“Don’t let the haters stop you from doing your thang.” Too many people care about what other people think. Too many people make very important life decisions based on other people’s opinions. Why do we do that? Those other people are not going to live your life for you. You have to decide what you want out of life and you have to do it. Sometimes it’s really hard when you’re going against the current. When everybody is saying “That doesn’t make any sense. What are you nuts?” Yeah, it may be nuts but this is what I have to do.
What did your life look like right after Mean Girls came out?
While we were shooting Mean Girls during my first year of college, I found out they were turning The Life of Pi into a film. I was determined to get that part. So I dropped out of college to go to the little town in India where the book takes place so that I could do some indepth research. I did that for a few months and came back and was just waiting for them to start production. I assumed that it was going to happen any day now and it didn’t. They lost their director and the project ended up getting put on hold so I went back to college.
I used college as an excuse. I’m just going to wait until they are getting Life of Pi ready and as soon as the movie is underway, if I get the part, I’ll just drop out of school again.. The project kept getting delayed. Three months turned into a year turned into four years. It was actually six years because of that year off. Life of Pi was attached to four different directors over the years so every time a new director [came aboard], I’d go to the library and get out all the movies they had made and research that director. I worked really really hard to try to get this part. In the end, they gave it to somebody else.
When that rejection happened, what was your initial reaction and how were you able to go on after spending so much of your life preparing for the part?
I felt like someone had died. Very slowly over the course of six years, I was building this boy that was a character in a book. By the end of those years, that was a real person inside of me. Those old Tamil songs I listened to as a kid, Pi would’ve listened to those songs. When I got the email saying I didn’t get the part, I felt like that person just died instantly. It was traumatic. I think I was in shock for a couple weeks. I felt dead inside for a long time.
How did you decide where to go from there?
I knew I had to get a job so I went for an interview at the bank where my mom and sister worked. I looked around at these cubicles and these people working under the fluorescent lights and I just knew it wasn’t for me. I can’t do this. I’d rather not be here on earth.
In that period of feeling dead inside and knowing I couldn’t work in an office, I peripherally heard about this thing called being an Au Pair, where a young person would be hired as a nanny for kids in Europe. I thought maybe this would be the one thing that would excite me. I also just wanted to leave my life. It felt like a way to escape and to be paid. I applied on a website and I got it, so I moved to Munich.
How long did you do that for?
I did that for a year. The kids were the perfect age, 9 and 10. They were still malleable but I didn’t have to change diapers. When I moved and I saw how beautiful that city was and I got to know that family, I really loved working for them. I just kept reminding myself how outlandish this whole thing was, having a college degree and this expectation from my family that I should go and get a real job and dispelling and rejecting all of that and going to Europe and working for a family doing their laundry. [But] it was the thing that brought me back to life.
It was a good lesson for me. You have to listen to yourself and if there’s something inside telling you “I don’t want to do this or I can’t do this.” then you have to figure out what you actually want to do. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense because sometimes it means you are going to have no money or career wise you’re going backwards. Excuse me, you paid to spend four years to get your degree and now you’re washing someone’s underwear? What? That doesn’t really make sense on paper but that’s what I needed.
I was miserable anyways so I felt like what did I have to lose? If I go and don’t like it, I could always come back here and I ended up loving it.
That feels like a leap that a lot of people want to take but ultimately don’t.
I think everybody has moments in their life where they are like, I hate my life. Whether it’s while they are in school or living at home or very often at their job where they get up in the morning and just dread going to work. People entertain the idea of doing something else but it’s scary. It’s scary to risk everything and leave the security of everything you know and go to a place where you don’t know anything. But you have to do that. The more you do it, the more you learn, what’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is that you lose everything. But, you start up again.
Was it in Munich where you got the appreciation for handmade things or did you always have that interest?
No, I’d always been doing that. I’ve been obsessed with making things since I was a little kid. Even when we were filming Mean Girls, I was working at this Pioneer Village spinning wool. Tina Fey found out and when she was pregnant with her first daughter, Alice, she asked for some wool and I sent her some yarn that I had spun. She was learning how to knit. So they were really familiar on set, they called me Martha Stewart because they knew I did pottery and knitted and everything.
So, what happened after your year in Munich?
After my year was up, I had to come back to Toronto to renew my work visa and when I got back, I knew I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to go back to Germany but I didn’t want to be an Au Pair. I thought I was going to go back to Europe and do something in the arts. While I was waiting, I decided to start a small business doing calligraphy and got some traction.
Then I went back to Germany and while I was there, I was getting a lot of requests to come back and do calligraphy. I was flying back and forth from Toronto a lot and I ended up spending more time in North America than in Munich. I decided to come back. I thought, this calligraphy thing is going well, you can always move back to Munich later and that’s what brought me to New York.
I recently spent a month in my childhood home and digging through my parents’ old photo boxes. I found some old handwritten cards that my dad gave to my mom. I think there’s something so special about it. Where did your love for letter writing come from?
When I was in elementary school, there was no internet. I had a cousin in Sri Lanka that I’d never met. My grandmother would go back and forth between Toronto and Sri Lanka and she initiated a letter writing correspondence between me and my cousin.
I’d write a letter and it’d go to Sri Lanka and my cousin would write back. Her penmanship was incredible, like a typewriter. She’d do little crayon pencil drawings on the letters that were just so beautiful. I awaited her letters with so much excitement. That was my first introduction to actual letter writing. The correspondence went on for years. I think it grew from there, just knowing how special it was… that feeling of opening up the letter and feeling like this person I’d never met was right there with me.
Handwritten correspondence is very different from any other form of communication. You’re communicating with the person you’re writing to but you’re also communicating with yourself. When you’re alone and coming up with what to say that comes out through your pen, you’re sifting through your thoughts.
There’s something nice about it because most of our modes of communication are so instant and digital.
Yeah, they are cold. The actual letter forms are manufactured through a button whereas when you have to write it yourself, when you write a letter ‘K.’ It’s your version of a ‘K’ and every person will have their own version of that same letter and even if it looks the same, they aren’t. They aren’t made by the same person. Whereas the ‘K’ you press on your phone? Everyone uses that same ‘K’.
Did you teach yourself how to do calligraphy?
Yeah I did. After I started the business, I thought I should probably take some classes. I joined a society called IAMPETH, which stands for International Association of Master Penmanship and Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting. They have a convention every year in a different city where you can take classes on penmanship, taught by the top calligraphers in the country. The White House calligrapher taught a class one year. It’s when I started taking these classes that I realized I have so much to learn.
I read that you did a pottery apprenticeship. How did that come about?
His name is Guy Wolf and he makes Marta Stewart’s flower pots. I read about him in Martha’s magazine and I was like, I really want to learn from him, so I sought him out.
Was it hard to convince him to let you learn from him?
Yes, actually. He said no at first and then I begged him. I begged him through a letter written in calligraphy and then he said yes.
What did that apprenticeship look like?
Well I shouldn’t even really call it an apprenticeship because a real apprenticeship is spending seven years under a master and being there full time. I’ve done it for a week here and a week there for 10 years. Overall, the relationship is, I go there and he shows me how to do something and it’s up to me to do it. He’ll come and check in and say that looks good or you’re doing that wrong or that looks better. Overall it just takes practice. There’s a saying in the pottery world, the first 1000 is the hardest. Of one shape. You have to do 1000 of them to get the feel of what it should be. It’s repetition. I just continue to make pots to get better. The more you do it, the better you get.
You’re essentially letting your curiosity drive you.
Always. People are surprised by that, like what do you mean you reached out to this guy and asked him to teach you? That never seemed like a strange thing to me. To ask someone for their time. If you’re willing to give something back in return. I know I’m a hard worker and the offer I made was I just want to come there and watch you. I’ll clean up. I know how to work with clay so I’ll empty the slop buckets. I’ll clean up the floor, just so that I can watch you. That’s what I proposed.
When I went there, within the first few days, he was like, do you want to try throwing? I was like what? You’re going to let me touch the clay? He said, yeah sure. If you’re willing to work hard and give something in return for being taught, I think that you shouldn’t be afraid of asking.
How do you differentiate between leisure and work in your life?
To me, the word leisure conjures up another word: peace. I think of peace and calm and I feel like I’ve figured out a way to bring that into work. I don’t have this “now I’m working and buckled down to this thing that causes anxiety” and “now I have free leisure time.”
A huge part of it was carving out this path for myself that was extremely difficult to navigate early on because it made no sense. It made no sense to my parents or anyone around me. I was talking to my sister about this recently and she said, “When I think back to when we were kids, I just remember thinking, what is he doing? It was bewildering to me… all the things you were doing.” To a lot of people, the way I do things doesn’t really add up. I figured it out for myself and it’s extremely unconventional.
I think the past few years have caused a lot of people to question what they do for work and whether or not they find joy in it.
Overall I find the ultimate question people need to ask themselves is: What do I want? And they need to come up with that answer on their own. In a very deep way. What do I want out of life? But also right at this moment. If you can’t really answer that, you need to do some work and that takes time.
When you figure that out, it actually is simple to achieve it but it means you have to let go of a lot of things. And people are not usually willing to let go. If the answer to that is I want to be more creative everyday. Maybe you can make a pledge that every night you’re going to come home and make dinner. You’re going to commit yourself to doing that.
You take the money you’d spend on takeout and cook every night and that’s more creative. That’s one example but ultimately, if the answer is I want to be more creative and I hate my job… then you need to quit your job. Then the rebuttal is: how am I going to pay rent? Maybe you move back in with your parents. But I don’t want to do that. Well you can’t have both so, what do you want more? “To be creative.” “But I can’t.” That’s what I hear over and over. But I can’t, I need the security. I need medical insurance that I have to pay for.
I don’t have medical insurance. People always ask, well aren’t you scared? And I say, not really. It’s always a trade off. I know the cost that is associated with that security. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be miserable on a daily basis so I can have medical insurance. To me, it’s like what’s the point? What’s the point in having the security of a job, an apartment, and insurance and then everyday you come home and hate your life. So you can have three weeks off a year so you can do something fun?
I was trying to learn how to book bind last year when a friend recommended your HGTV YouTube videos to me. How did that partnership happen?
They approached me about doing a home tour. Their channel is called Handmade so I felt it was so appropriate because so much of my place is homemade. It was the longest video they’ve ever made for a home tour and it went viral. When that happened, I asked if they were interested in making how-to videos. Over the past year, we’ve made over 20 videos that have accumulated over 8 million views. Every single video was something that I’m interested in. I think the reason why they’ve been successful is because it comes across in the videos. They are things I’m genuinely passionate about. That’s what gave me the push to start my own channel. I needed to do that with them to figure out how I wanted to do my own.
So now you have your own channel that just launched. What’s your goal with these new videos?
With HGTV, I decided that all I’m doing with these videos is opening the door to my life to the public. This is genuinely what I’m doing on a day to day basis. Whether it’s alone or with friends, these are things I do and sometimes I think, wow this is really rewarding and I wish I could share this with people. Because I think it’d rub off in a good way.
When we started putting the videos out and the response was so good, I felt really rewarded knowing that my assumption was correct. That these simple everyday tasks could be turned into things that give people a sense of comfort. They don’t have to do it themselves but just watch someone else do it. It’s meaningful to them. What I hope to achieve isn’t breaking new ground. I’m not creating anything new. I feel like I’m waking something up. I feel like I’m taking a big treasure box that has sat in an attic for many many years, and I’m dusting it off and opening it up and sharing it with my generation. I think they need it.
Lindsay Lohan is acting again with a new movie out on Netflix. Is Mean Girls 2 something you’d ever be interested in?
I really enjoyed her new film, but no. Why ruin a good thing?