Adults’ star Amita Rao on playing Issa Damani, the unhinged bestie everyone loves
Think about everything you’d do in a sticky situation: a sleazy old man sitting across from you and your friends on the train starts masturbating; your best friend is hospitalised for rectal bleeding; your partner’s pal ‘Jules’, who you swore to be chill about, turns out to be Julia Fox. Then picture someone doing the exact opposite of these things, and you have Issa Damani from Adults. In the excruciating opening scene of the hangout sitcom dubbed ‘Gen Z’s version of Friends’, she begins to aggressively jerk off in retaliation to a pervert. So many viewers dropped out at this point—less than 90 seconds into the episode—that FX decided to redo the entire pilot. Issa also makes Billie’s medical emergency all about herself, affronted at not being chosen as her best friend’s proxy. “Bleached eyebrows aren’t a personality,” she taunts Julia Fox.
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“To clarify, I think Issa is annoying. She’s very selfish, but in a way that’s unaware, so it’s hard to punish her for it. It’s almost like a child’s selfishness,” admits Amita Rao, who plays the character so convincingly that I forget I’m not actually speaking with Issa. The Indian American actor speaks to me from a balcony in Greece, where she is currently attending a family wedding, debuting a glorious tan and a short bob. She’s spent the last few days swimming in the sea, and the afternoon sun keeps heating her laptop, forcing her to change positions every few minutes. “And to also clarify,” she continues once she has retreated from the blaze, “I love, love annoying women, so I don’t care. I think the best comedy characters are the most annoying, like Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory or Ron Trosper in The Chair Company.”
