Janina Gavankar

Janina Gavankar

Biography

Janina Zione Gavankar is an American actress and musician. Gavankar is also trained as a pianist, vocalist, and orchestral percussionist. She majored in Theatre Performance at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Gavankar’s roles include Papi, a lesbian lothario in The L Word; Leigh Turner, a cop with a big secret on The Gates; Ms. Dewey, the personification of a Microsoft branded search engine who comments about the user’s searches; Shiva, the namesake of the sought-after trophy on The League; shapeshifter Luna Garza on HBO’s True Blood; McKenna Hall on The CW’s Arrow; and Meredith Bose on NBC’s The Mysteries of Laura. She also played Diana Thomas on FOX’s supernatural drama Sleepy Hollow.

Overview

  • Age:
    45 years old
  • Born:
    November 29, 1980

External Links

Links:
Social Media:

Additional Information

Character Statistics

Statistics are updated daily. 2 characters

Roles

2 roles
  • Regular 0 · 0%
  • Recurring 1 · 50%
  • Guest 1 · 50%

Status

100% alive
  • Alive 2 · 100%
  • Dead 0 · 0%

Note: character roles may exceed the number of characters played, if the character appeared on multiple TV shows.

Related Articles

1 article tagged with this actor on the LezWatch.TV blog.

ClexaCon ’22: Janina Gavankar

"Queer stories have been told with different faces and different names for years." - Janina Gavankar talks to us about TV, video games, and immortality.

November 2, 2022

Characters

There are 2 characters listed for this actor; none are dead.

Casey

Casey

Will Trent (guest)
Clichés:  
Eva “Papi” Torres

Eva “Papi” Torres

The L Word (recurring)
Clichés:  

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This page was last edited on March 26th, 2026.