Jeff Garlin has joined the cast of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever for its final season.
Garlin will play a man who sparks the interest of Devi’s (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) grandmother, Nirmala (Ranjita Chakravarty). It marks the first series Garlin has joined since he was let go from ABC’s The Goldbergs a year ago following an HR investigation. He has remained part of the ensemble at HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he’s also an executive producer.
Netflix and co-creators Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher announced in March that the fourth season of Never Have I Ever, which follows an Indian American teenager (Ramakrishnan) through her high school years, would be its last.
Garlin starred on The Goldbergs for most of its first nine seasons. He exited the Sony-produced comedy in December 2021, however, after an interview with Vanity Fair in which he acknowledged he had been the subject of HR investigations for alleged behavior on set that made members of the show’s staff uncomfortable: “There has been an HR investigation on me the past three years,” he said at the time. “HR has come to me three years in a row for my behavior on set.”
“[A]s a comedian, if somebody is offended by what I say, all I can say is, I’m sorry. OK? I have never physically come at anyone, for any reason, so that I find terribly confusing and untrue,” Garlin told Vanity Fair after hearing some Goldbergs staffers felt demeaned and disrespected by his language and physical actions.
Garlin stopped appearing on The Goldbergs late in its ninth season; the show wrote around his absence and occasionally used old footage of him in the final episodes of the season. He was written off at the start of season 10 when his character, patriarch Murray Goldberg, died offscreen.
On Never Have I Ever, he’ll play Len, a sweet man who fixes a mean sandwich and makes Nirmala reconsider whether she really is done with relationships forever. The final season is slated to air in 2023.
Deadline first reported the news.
