Frasier: Why Dev Sharma From Paramount's Reboot Looks So Familiar

In Episode 5 of the 2023 "Frasier" reboot, Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), and Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye) each receive invites to an exclusive Harvard University club called the Founders' Society. When they first show up to a party that effectively serves as their membership audition, the three of them plan on talking up one another's accomplishments in hopes that they're all accepted. However, once they find out that the club will only take two new members, they start scheming against each other.

One of the existing Founder's Club members whose approval they seek at this party is a professor named Dev Sharma. During an altogether brief conversation, he and his partner write in small notebooks, blatantly recording each prospective member's qualifications.

Playing Dr. Sharma on "Frasier" is Parvesh Cheena, whose filmography consists predominantly of work on TV. If he looks familiar, it's most likely from one of the following highlights of his lengthy acting career.

Today, Parvesh Cheena is a seasoned performer with more than 180 credits to his name. Whereas plenty of prolific actors start off in short films or independent projects, his very first on-screen role was in the 2002 comedy "Barbershop," opposite names like Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson, and Cedric the Entertainer.

Cheena plays a character named Samir, who works as a cashier at a store Ice Cube's character — Calvin Palmer Jr. — frequents. Though his total time on-screen is minimal, in one memorable scene, he thanks Calvin for encouraging him during a difficult moment, emphasizing the power small kindnesses can unknowingly have on others' lives. "For one brief, embarrassing moment, I chose to give up," he says. "But your words were just the reminder I needed. Perhaps insignificant to you, but sometimes I think we're unaware of how the little things for us can be so huge for others."

Samir's character must have resonated with plenty of the first "Barbershop" film's viewers because Cheena reprised this role in "Barbershop 2: Back in Business," which came out two years later and marked his second-ever screen credit.

After "Barbershop 2," Parvesh Cheena started booking guest appearances on TV shows like "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" and "The West Wing," in addition to bit parts in films like the 2007 romantic comedy, "Because I Said So." In 2010, he landed his first role in the main cast of a network TV show as a character named Gupta on the NBC sitcom "Outsourced."

Ben Rappaport stars as Todd Dempsy, a corporate middle manager whose superiors put him in charge of a call center in Mumbai, India. Gupta is one of the local employees at that call center and something of an outcast in the workplace due to his pronounced talkativeness.

Cheena told MovieWeb that his character was a hit with many of the show's fans. "The fun that Gupta kind of taps into where I get a lot of like messages on Facebook and Twitter from like kids. And I think it's because he is kind of a man child you know?" he said. "He's a little socially awkward, maybe not the most developed."

Once Parvesh Cheena established himself as a talented TV comedy actor in "Outsourced," his frequency of work in the medium began ramping up. For example, he appeared in two episodes of "Arrested Development" Season 4 in 2013, and played a recurring role on NBC's "Sean Saves the World," starting that same year.

Then, in 2016, he joined the cast of Rachel Bloom's musical comedy "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" as Sunil Odhav, one of Paula's (Donna Lynne Champlin) classmates and first friends at San Dimas College School of Law. Tonally, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" balances broad comedy with sincere drama and Sunil's characterization reflects this. Early on, he helps Paula prank a rude classmate. Later, as they get to know each other better, she finds out that he is recently widowed and raising three kids on his own.

In an interview with Queerty, Cheena shared that he had a lot of fun working on the show. "I played him like me — like, I grew up to be a musical theater-referencing nerd, too. So I really just got to be myself," he said, referencing Sunil developing a sudden interest in musical theater. "That's why I loved the show: Because you just got to be around other people from film and TV who were musical theater kids."

Season 2 of Apple TV+ original series "Mythic Quest" introduces Parvesh Cheena as Brad Bakshi's (Danny Pudi) brother, Zack Bakshi. By this point, fans know that Brad can be cold and power-hungry. Zack, however, seems like his brother's opposite. Brad insists that his sibling's exterior is hiding an inner darkness, but naïve producer David (David Hornsby) takes to Zack and believes this to be a lie. Soon it comes out that Zack's friendliness is, in fact, an act. His true aim, it turns out, is to dismantle Mythic Quest Studios and salvage what he can for his own corporate aims.

A piece Forbes published about Cheena's "Mythic Quest" role notes that he and Pudi are long-time close friends in real life. It was executive producer Megan Ganz, however, who decided to bring him in for the part. "Parvesh is such a great actor," series actor Jessie Ennis said. "He brought so much to it and he and Danny go way back. They kind of are like brothers. They have a comedy duo and they've grown up together in so many ways. It was really fun watching their dynamic and seeing them play off each other because they already had such shorthand. They were able to immediately run with it. That was a thrill."

Zack's story arc takes place over the course of just two episodes, but deepens Brad's character by providing viewers with some unique insight into his home life.

While he started voice acting before he first showed up on "Mythic Quest," Parvesh Cheena became a prolific voice actor, starting around 2019. That year, he worked as a recurring cast member on Disney Junior shows "T.O.T.S." and "The Rocketeer." Moving forward, he also voiced important parts in shows like "The Owl House," "Centaurworld," "Craig of the Creek," and "The Mandalorian." Meanwhile, his longest-running live-action TV role during this time was on Starz's original series, "Shining Vale," and lasted for six episodes.

Courteney Cox plays the show's lead character, an author named Pat Phelps. She moves her family into what turns out to be a legitimately haunted house. As she struggles to connect with her husband and kids, the ghosts that inhabit their new home find ways to strain their familial relationships even further. Cheena, meanwhile, plays the family's neighbor, Laird.

While "Shining Vale" is technically a horror series, Cheena's character skews more comedic, which he discussed in an interview on the FANVERSATION YouTube channel. "My scenes with Greg [Kinnear] — because I'm 90% with Greg — are funny," he said. "I even told [series creator Jeff Astrof] that the audition sides — the sides we get to audition — were some of the funniest auditions I ever had read." 

Dev Sharma on "Frasier," then, is merely the latest entry on an impressive resume of comedic TV performances, including "Shining Vale" and countless other successful series.