Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Never Have I Ever’ follows the story of Devi, an impulsive teenager trying to balance her studies with her complicated love life. Most of Devi’s life revolves around her family and friends, which means she spends a lot of time in her school, Sherman Oaks High. This is where she hangs out with her friends between classes as they discuss their futures while also helping each other navigate their romance with other boys and girls. It is in her school that Devi banters with her nemesis-turned-lover, Ben, and swoons over guys like Paxton and Ethan. With so much drama set in and around the school, you might want to know if it’s a real place. Let’s find out. SPOILERS AHEAD
Sherman Oaks High is Not a Real School
No, Sherman Oaks High in ‘Never Have I Ever’ is not a real school. It is a fictional place created to serve the story of the show. There is a real-life Sherman Oaks neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. However, all the schools in their surrounding areas have different names and don’t share anything with the fictional school that Devi and her friends attend.
While it might seem like an exciting school with great teachers like Mr. Kulkarni who go out of their way to help their students, Sherman Oaks High doesn’t exist in real life. All the scenes set inside the school have been filmed in the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood. The studio, which could be a city unto itself, provides a lot of great locations which have been used to create Sherman Oaks High in ‘Never Have I Ever.’
Mindy Kaling, the show’s co-creator, used some of her experiences as an Indian-American teenager growing up in a Hindu household in Devi’s story. However, while Devi goes to a public school with some very eccentric characters to keep things interesting, Kaling went to a private school, Buckingham Browne & Nichols, in Cambridge. While Kaling went to Dartmouth, Devi aimed for Princeton as her only choice for school because this is where she told her father she’d go.
Despite not being a real school, Sherman Oaks High is meant to represent a place that its audience could relate to. Because it is a teen romantic comedy, it has quite a few things that feel out of place, especially when it comes to attractive teenagers played by actors not in their teen years anymore. However, the show does create a realistic portrayal of a nerd who wants to break out of how she has been labeled all this while. It breaks the stereotyping of nerds by presenting a different side of them through characters like Devi, Fabiola, and Ben.
For all the romance and drama that takes place in the Netflix series, Sherman Oaks High serves as the grounds for all conflicts and their resolution. For four seasons, it becomes Devi and her friends’ home away from home, which is how it usually is for teenagers who spend most of their time in school, focused on their future while trying to have something more in their lives. With all this in mind, we can say that Sherman Oaks High is fictional, but the show’s creators have thrown in some things to make it seem relatable on some level, if not realistic.
Read More: Is Never Have I Ever Based on Mindy Kaling’s Life?
