Darren Barnet knows he’s the designated hottie as Paxton Hall-Yoshida on “Never Have I Ever” — and he’s fine with that.
On the Netflix hit — which follows a first-generation Indian-American teenage girl and was inspired by co-creator Mindy Kaling’s own childhood — Barnet plays a popular swimmer the lead pines over and eventually befriends, albeit with a lot of complications along the way.
“I took the role knowing that they wanted Paxton to be more than that, so I don’t mind that that’s what catches the eye about him,” he told Page Six. “Shamelessly, he’s kind of a thirst trap, but I love that they humanize him and they let me humanize him and you see that there is a lot more to him than that. I just love that they gave me room to play and dig deeper than his abs.”
Barnet said his Instagram following has shot up from around 34,000 to over 600,000 in the short time the show has been out. Not surprisingly, there have been quite a few DMs and some of them are … kinda creepy.
“Every time I refresh them there’s probably like a 100 or 200 more,” he told us. “The ones that are sweet and just admiring the show I try to reply to and tell them thank you from the bottom of my heart. The ones that are asking me to take my shirt off, I usually don’t open. But yeah it’s been a lot.”
And the creepiest?
“I think one of them sending me pictures of my sisters and being like, ‘I wish I was your sister,’” remembered Barnet.
The Los Angeles native is quite a bit older than his 17-year-old character — he’s actually 29 — something he’s initially reticent to discuss, explaining that he wants “a very long career.”
“I’ve looked younger my whole life and it used to really upset me as a kid because I thought it made me less manly but now it’s really started to be a blessing.”
As for a possible Season 2, no news has been announced from Netflix yet but Barnet is hopeful that it will happen.
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