Manu Narayan

Manu Narayan is an American actor, singer, songwriter, composer, film producer, and saxophonist born on August 16, 1973, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His Broadway career spans from 1995 to 2021, and his work extends across film, television, and music.

Narayan trained at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he won the Concerto Competition as a student and performed the Glazunov Saxophone Concerto with orchestra at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. He later served as a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon from 2013 to 2016. His saxophone training encompasses both western classical and South Indian Carnatic traditions; he studied the Carnatic saxophone in Mangalore, India under Sri Kadri Gopalnath and performed on All India Radio after winning that station's music competition in Mangalore.

Narayan made his Broadway debut in 2004 originating the role of Akaash, the central hero, in the Andrew Lloyd Webber and A.R. Rahman musical Bombay Dreams, a performance that earned him a Drama League nomination. In 2018, he joined the original cast of Bartlett Sher's revival of My Fair Lady at Lincoln Center Theater, playing Zoltan Karpathy, and that same year appeared as Robbie Patel in the original Broadway cast of Gettin' The Band Back Together at the Belasco Theater. In 2021, Narayan played Theo in the Broadway revival of Company at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, stepping into the role after Kyle Dean Massey departed following the COVID-19 theater closure.

Beyond Broadway, Narayan created the role of Charlie Kringas in the Roundabout Theater and Fiasco off-Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along in 2019, and originated the role of Uncle Ernie in the Kennedy Center revival of The Who's Tommy. His regional stage work includes playing Richard Roma in La Jolla Playhouse's revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he received a nomination for a 2012 San Diego Critics Circle Craig Noel Award. Earlier stage credits include the Second National Tour of Miss Saigon from 1995 to 1999, as well as productions at Shakespeare and Company, the Public Theater, the Wilma Theater, and Yale Repertory Theatre, among others.

In film, Narayan co-starred as Rajneesh alongside Mike Myers in the Paramount Pictures feature The Love Guru in 2008. He appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender in 2010, co-starred with Lucy Hale in A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song in 2011, and co-produced and starred in Sudhish Kamath's Good Night Good Morning. His television credits include recurring appearances on The Sopranos, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Grey's Anatomy, The Blacklist, and And Just Like That. He currently recurs as Hari Sahni on the Apple TV series Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm.

As a recording artist, Narayan has contributed original and cover material to the soundtracks of The Love Guru, Good Night Good Morning, Walkaway, and A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song. He co-wrote the single Help Me to Find for the film Hiding Divya. Narayan has collaborated repeatedly with Grammy winner Frank London, serving as lead vocalist for the concert version of London's Soundbrush Records klezmer concept album A Night in the Old Marketplace, performing the work across Europe and North America. He is a member of the band SHARABI, a klezmer and Desi collaboration with London and percussionist Deep Singh, which performed at the 2014 Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, Poland. Narayan is also the lead singer of D A R U N A M alongside Radovan Jovicevic, a founding member of Yugoslavia's Grupa Zana, a group whose music draws from American, Indian, and Serbian traditions. The band released the EP All That's Beautiful Must Die in 2007 and the album The Last Angel on Earth, which premiered live on CBC national radio in Canada in 2010. In 2003, Narayan performed at a state dinner during President George W. Bush's first official visit to the United Kingdom, where he sang for Queen Elizabeth II, the Royal Family, Bush, and Colin Powell.