A native New Yorker, Devika Bhisé is an actress, dancer, filmmaker, and jazz vocalist who can most recently be seen in a season-long arc in ABC's The Rookie: Feds, The Rookie, and Netflix's The Recruit. She has also appeared on Fox's Fantasy Island, Chicago: Med on NBC, Elementary on CBS, and the Apple+ series Extrapolations, starring Kit Harrington, and Meryl Streep, and Marion Cotillard. Her notable feature film credits include starring opposite Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, and Stephen Fry in The Man Who Knew Infinity, the romantic comedy The Accidental Husband starring Uma Thurman and Colin Firth, and the psychological thriller, Impossible Monsters. In 2019 she played the titular role in The Warrior Queen of Jhansi, which was released theatrically by Roadside Attractions and later streamed on Hulu. Beyond her work in television and film , Bhisé has appeared in theatrical productions including Partial Comfort’s off-Broadway play And Miles To Go, and a Baltimore production of The Partition by Ira Hauptman. The latter, which is based on Robert Kanigel’s book The Man Who Knew Infinity, contributed to her achieving the role as Ramanujan’s wife in the 2015 movie adaption that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) in 2015.
Bhisé attended Johns Hopkins University, where she was awarded the Hodson Trust Scholarship and the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship under the mentorship of the award-winning actor, John Astin. As a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Bhisé brought the nearly extinct UNESCO heritage art form, Kudiyattam, to the United States for the first time. At eighteen years old, Bhisé directed and produced a documentary short film titled Hijras: The Third Gender, which won the award for Best Social Documentary at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival. She has also been honored by Asia Society as a leader in “socio-cultural developments that have long-term impact on the presentation and response to Asian-American culture” and has been an ongoing contributor to The Asia Foundation. Her interest in this vein of social activism led to her being chosen as 100 of “New York’s New Abolitionists,” advocating against human trafficking in New York City along with other influential New Yorkers including Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Lee Daniels, Diane von Furstenberg, and Gloria Steinem, among others.
Bhisé serves on the board of Alvin Ailey and Sing For Hope. She has studied Bharatanatyam under the tutelage of Swati Bhisé and has performed at numerous New York venues, including Lincoln Center, Asia Society, Symphony Space, The Natural History Museum, and Danny Kaye Playhouse.
