Gavankar has acted in theatre, film, television, and online. Her most notable roles include
Iden Versio, a
canon Star Wars character and the protagonist of
Star Wars: Battlefront II; shapeshifter
Luna Garza in
True Blood,
Papi in
The L Word;
Ms. Dewey, the personification of a
Microsoft live search engine; and
Shiva, the namesake of the sought after trophy on
The League. She regularly appears in
Funny or Die shorts. In 2006, she joined the cast of
The L Word as a series regular and shot all of the clips used for
Ms. Dewey. In 2008, Gavankar appeared in the TV series
Stargate Atlantis, ''
Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, My Boys, and Factory. In 2009, she appeared in the TV shows The Cleaner, Dollhouse, Three Rivers, and The League, as well as indie films, Men, Interrupted
, Indian Gangster
, and Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey. Gavankar provided the voice of Nikki in Quantum Quest
. She landed another lead role in The Gates'', since cancelled, on ABC. She appears on CW's
Arrow as a
vice squad police officer and brief girlfriend to
Oliver Queen. Gavankar is a
gamer and has appeared on, as well as co-hosted,
G4 TV's Attack of the Show!, Epileptic Gaming's
Up All Night, where she helped review
Rock Band,
Burnout Paradise, and
Army of Two. In 2011, Gavankar became a series regular in HBO's
True Blood as a public school teacher and
shapeshifter,
Luna Garza, who gets romantically involved with one of the main characters of the series. Her indie film,
Satellite of Love, premiered at the
Dallas International Film Festival in 2012, and her 2012 indie ''I'm Afraid of Virginia Wolf
is currently in post-production. On December 20, 2012, Gavankar was the last person interviewed for original 2005–2012 run of Attack of the Show!'', which aired on
G4 TV. On August 3, 2013, Gavankar landed a role as a witch named Qetsiyah in the fifth season of
The Vampire Diaries. She guest starred in the third season of
Husbands. In 2014, she starred as Amita in the video game,
Far Cry 4. She also played Detective Meredith Bose on
The Mysteries of Laura from 2014 to 2016. She starred as
Iden Versio, the main character in the campaign mode of the 2017
Electronic Arts video game,
Star Wars Battlefront II. In 2018, she appeared in two films.
Blindspotting premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival, and
The Vanishing of Sidney Hall was distributed by
A24. In late 2019, Gavankar joined Apple TV's
The Morning Show, as Alison Namazi, co-anchor of the pop culture segment of the titular show. Starting in 2021, Gavankar had a starring role as the antagonist in seasons 2 & 3 of the
ABC hit show,
Big Sky, playing the sibling in a mafia family. In 2023 Gavankar starred in video game
Alan Wake 2 as Kiran Estevez, an agent of the
Federal Bureau of Control, a role she reprised in The Lake House
DLC, released in October 2024.
Music Gavankar returned to music with a cover of
Kanye West's "
Love Lockdown". Gavankar's former all-female singing group, Endera, was signed to
Cash Money Records Universal Records. She collaborated on a project for a song called "Tell Me What" in India with Pratichee Mohapatra of
Viva, Deep, and Navraaz. She has had songs licensed to films and television and has sung and played
marimba on film scores. Gavankar was featured in Russian artist
Ella Leya's music video for "Wish I Could", in the music video by
San Francisco-based band Recliner for their single "Float Away", as well as the music video for
Manu Narayan's band Darunam. In August 2012, she released the single for her upcoming EP, entitled
Waiting for Godot, and in November,
Billboard premiered the official music video. It went on to win numerous film festival awards. While in high school, Gavankar auditioned for the front ensemble of the
Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps of
Rockford, Illinois. Before hearing whether she had made the corps, she was accepted for the
Yale School of Drama's summer camp and went there. "I fell in love with drum corps when I was 13 years old", Gavankar has stated, and remains a strong fan of the activity. When she heard the
Martin Garrix/Usher collaboration, "Don't Look Down", she had the idea of performing it as marching music. With assistance from
Drum Corps International, she contacted the
Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps and arranger Colin Bell. She went into the studios in New York with fifty members of Jersey Surf and recorded the music video "Don't Look Down- #JustAddDrumCorps Edition" that was released in April 2015. On May 20, 2015, Gavankar performed a percussion duet at
Carnegie Hall with
Questlove for the Best Buddies charity benefit.
Technology Gavankar was the first actress to use
Twitter, signing up on
Richard Branson's computer on
Necker Island in 2006. Gavankar was the personification of
Microsoft's interactive search engine
Ms. Dewey. In 2011, she created a free template for actors and artists to help them control their online presence and in 2012, spoke at the Suits and Spooks Conference about how she discovered a solution for data challenges faced by actors through the use of open source tools. In 2017, she launched a private discussion forum for members of the games industry. In 2018, she produced the first narrative film to use the
Arri Alexa LF. Gavankar is a first-round investor in
ClassPass. == Awards ==