The mysteries of laura
you won’t know the name janina gavankar, but you’ll know her face. she’s playing detective meredith bose on debra messing’s new action show the mysteries of laura (2014-current), but tv fans will recognise her as papi from the l word (2004-2009), detective hall from arrow (2012-current) and shapeshifting teacher luna garza in true blood (2008-2014). the 33-year-old doesn’t get her arty side from her parents pete and shan-de-mohra, who’re both immigrants from india. before passing away in 2012, pete was an engineer, while mohra is an ordained minister in illinois. she’s a classically-trained singer and plays the piano and other percussion instruments. janina received her degree in theater performance from chicago’s university of illinois in 2003 and was the lead singer of all-girl band endera. janina made her bigscreen debut in 2001 drama movie why is god…, playing the lead role of an american indian woman whose baby dies. she also played “a fine woman” in 2002’s comedy barbershop and then a tv news reporter in the barbershop 2 sequel in 2004. she claims to have been the first actor to use twitter, saying that she joined the social network in 2006 while staying at virgin boss richard branson’s private retreat necker island. she’s also a self-confessed geek and appeared on gaming shows like attack of the show in 2008 to review videogames. janina was also the face of tech giant microsoft’s live search engine ms dewey between 2006 and 2009 – she gave real-time advice on your searches. after splitting from her long-term businessman boyfriend angelo sotira in 2010, janina was spotted in la restaurants with tv’s mister mean simon cowell. they even flirted on twitter and simon nicknamed her “trouble”, but the relationship fizzled out quickly.