Anisha Nagarajan

Anisha Nagarajan is an American actress and singer born in Evanston, Illinois, who was raised in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before her family relocated to the suburb of Fox Chapel. Her parents are immigrants from India; her mother, Geetha Nagarajan, worked as a developmental specialist at Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic, and her father, Nandu Nagarajan, is a professor at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nagarajan began her musical training early, studying piano under Natasha Snitkovsky and performing at Carnegie Hall at the age of ten. She also studied Carnatic Classical music. At fifteen, she spent a year at a boarding school in India, where she choreographed a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Back in Pennsylvania, she was a member of the Fox Chapel Area High School choir, and in 2001 was selected as one of ten Pennsylvania students to audition for the Multicultural National Honor Choir in San Antonio, Texas. She graduated from Fox Chapel Area High School in 2002, having performed in musical productions alongside playwright and composer Michael Mitnick. She subsequently enrolled in the Drama department of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

During her second year at NYU, Nagarajan was cast as Priya, the female lead in the Broadway musical Bombay Dreams, the Andrew Lloyd Webber production. She married actor Aalok Mehta, who co-starred in the same production. After completing her run in Bombay Dreams, she returned to NYU and finished her bachelor's degree. Her Broadway career continued with appearances in Hair and Stephen Sondheim's Company, in which she performed in the ensemble and understudied the roles of Joanne and Susan.

Following Bombay Dreams, Nagarajan appeared in several regional theater productions, including a Hangar Theatre production of Rent in Ithaca, New York, and The Wiz at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California. In 2006, she performed in A.R. Rahman's Bollywood Night at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. She also created the role of Alice in Mira Nair's musical adaptation of Monsoon Wedding, which premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

On television, Nagarajan is known for her role as Madhuri, a shy, soft-spoken call center employee, in the 2010 NBC series Outsourced. She has also guest starred on Grey's Anatomy, Code Black, Scandal, and Ugly Betty. Her Broadway appearances span from 2004 to 2021.