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How Hulu comedy 'Plan B' helped star Kuhoo Verma let go of 'sexual shame'

The raunchy new teen movie tells the story of a smart and sex-obsessed Indian American high schooler who must go on a road trip to find the morning-after pill.
Victoria Moroles as Lupe and Kuhoo Verma as Sunny in "Plan B" on Hulu.
Victoria Moroles as Lupe and Kuhoo Verma as Sunny in "Plan B" on Hulu.Brett Roedel / Hulu

After she read the script for “Plan B” — the raunchy new teen movie debuting Friday on Hulu — Kuhoo Verma came to a somewhat awkward realization about her own adolescence.

“I started remembering my high school self and how cringey I was for so much of it,” said Verma, 25. In particular, she recalled just how painful crushes, dating and romantic rejection can be for high schoolers, especially those who grew up in immigrant families like hers.

Verma plays Sunny, a smart and sex-obsessed teen who realizes that she needs to take the morning-after pill — also known by the brand name Plan B —  to ensure that she isn’t pregnant after a regrettable sexual encounter. But because Sunny is from South Dakota, a state that allows pharmacists to refuse to sell customers emergency contraception if they have moral objections, Sunny and her best friend, Lupe (played by Victoria Moroles), have to drive across the state to the region’s only Planned Parenthood facility to get the care she needs.

Portraying a character who is direct about her sexuality also led Verma to reflect on the mixed messages teens often get about dating and intimacy. “The film allowed me to let go of a lot of the sexual shame that I think a lot of people of color, and women of color specifically, ended up going through as you're growing up,” she said. 

But while “Plan B” is a teen comedy, the road trip central to the plot — which takes place because of growing restrictions on access to reproductive health care —  is a real and serious problem faced by patients across the country.

The film’s screenwriters, Prathi Srinivasan and Joshua Levy, formulated the idea for the story by drawing on their own experiences as teens in Plano, Texas, in 2007. They said that because Texas focuses on abstinence in sex education, they never got any useful information in school when it came to sexual health. Their anger at those lesson plans stayed with them and influenced how they wrote the film.

Sex education at their public school was “a piece of flaming garbage — it was a disservice to humanity,” said Srinivasan, who graduated in 2011. She particularly recalled the day all of the girls were instructed to stand up and take a chastity pledge swearing that they would “never let someone defile us.” 

Kuhoo Verma as Sunny and Victoria Moroles as Lupe in "Plan B" on Hulu.
Kuhoo Verma as Sunny and Victoria Moroles as Lupe in "Plan B" on Hulu.Brett Roedel / Hulu

Levy, a mixed-race Chinese American who is gay, also remembered being confused and appalled. “The day that they did the pledges for all the women, I was like: ‘Wait, why aren't men doing this? I'm so confused,’” he said. 

Levy and Srinivasan came of age when reproductive health clinics were forced to close because of anti-abortion legislation in Texas and around the country, and they said they wanted to highlight the consequences. “There were a rash of [clinic closures] happening in Texas, with critics calling them ‘abortion factories.’ When it's like, no. People need these for clinics for pap smears and breast exams,” Srinivasan said.

But the impact of lack of access to reproductive health care is not limited to residents of red states. Verma recalled when she and other cast members stopped at a diner in Syracuse, New York, where the film was shot, during a break in the production schedule. As they were discussing the movie’s plot, another customer chimed in. 

“She very nonchalantly said: ‘Oh, yeah, that happened to me. I tried to get Plan B a couple years ago, and the pharmacist turned me away, so I had to go drive a couple hours away.’ She said it so casually and kind of laughed it off,” Verma said. “But I was like: ‘That's not funny! That's horrifying.’”

Victoria Moroles as Lupe and Kuhoo Verma as Sunny in "Plan B" on Hulu.
Victoria Moroles as Lupe and Kuhoo Verma as Sunny in "Plan B" on Hulu.Brett Roedel / Hulu

Before “Plan B,” Verma was best known for her role as one of Kumail Nanjiani’s potential brides in the 2017 romantic comedy “The Big Sick” and for her starring role in the musical “Monsoon Wedding.” She was cast for both roles as an undergraduate in New York University’s theater program.

Verma said that while she did relate to Sunny in many ways, she is grateful that her parents were more open about things like dating while she was in high school. Like many South Asian parents of their generation, Verma’s parents originally avoided discussing sex and relationships while she was growing up. “The discussion was more one-liner. They said, ‘You know you’re not doing this until you’re in college,’” she said. “That was that.”

But when she began dating in high school anyway, her parents came around. “I dealt with a lot of similar anxieties as Sunny, so it was really nice to be able to actually address them,” she said. While much of the media coverage of the film has focused on the deep friendship between a South Asian teen and a Latina teen as a central part of the plot, Verma appreciates that Sunny is relatable across races and ethnicities.

“One of my favorite parts of the story was that she didn't necessarily have to be Indian. She could have been from any culture with similar kinds of pressures,” Verma said. “That felt so freeing, because I felt like I was there because I could genuinely bring something new and exciting to this part.”