Adi Shankar On How James Van Der Beek and Indian Storytelling Drove Netflix’s ‘Devil May Cry’

Adi Shankar picks up the phone from India and almost immediately announces his intentions. “I figured I could use you as a therapist,” he says. The producer and showrunner behind Netflix’s Devil May Cry has a lot on his mind, and some of it has nothing to do with animation budgets.

The second season of Devil May Cry, the anime series adapted from the hit game franchise, drops on Netflix on May 12, 2026, and by every metric, is expected to be a triumphant moment for its Kolkata-born, U.S.-based showrunner. Season one was a critical and commercial hit and renewed global conversations around what adult animation can accomplish. But before we get there, Shankar is very upfront that he’s grieving a dear friend.

James Van Der Beek, best known as the titular character in Dawson’s Creek, passed away after a battle with colorectal cancer on Feb. 11, 2026. Shankar’s first scheduled stop after this interview, he mentions near the end of our conversation, is Texas — to be with Van Der Beek’s family and celebrate the actor’s life.

“He was incredibly spiritually gifted and spiritually insightful. He was just the kind of guy you got on the phone and called when there was any hard situation, and he could just break it down for you emotionally and help you see the light and the truth in what was going on,” Shankar says.

Van Der Beek was more than just the lead from Dawson’s Creek, Shankar points out. He was a dancer, singer, writer, director, showrunner, and creator. He points to the series What Would Diplo Do?, in which Van Der Beek played DJ-producer Diplo, as evidence of his comedic range. Van Der Beek even asked Shankar to come on as showrunner for a planned second season of that show. (“I said I’d do it as long as I get to play [nu-metal band Limp Bizkit’s frontman] Fred Durst,” Shankar says with a laugh.)

Throughout the development of Devil May Cry’s debut season, Van Der Beek was on the other end of the line for Shankar. “I don’t want to say he was responsible for season one,” Shankar says carefully, “but in a lot of ways, through the development process, all the challenges, it’s like, I told him about everything. Every step of the way, I literally called him. ‘Hey, I’m working on the script about this. Oh, there’s gonna be a demonic, violent bunny rabbit.'”

The absence is what defines this upcoming second season, at least emotionally. “I don’t have my friend to navigate this with. I don’t have James to talk to about all of this,” Shankar says.

The grief manifests in different ways, even if it sounds bizarre. At a recent wedding he attended in India, which he describes as “pretty over the top in a good way,” Shankar found himself on stage, dancing with Bollywood actors Ranveer Singh and Anil Kapoor. “I never met Ranveer before,” Shankar says. “It was uninitiated, not motivated… he [Ranveer] just rushed into the audience and grabbed us.” Shankar, self-described as a reluctant dancer, managed to let loose.

“My fiancée was like, ‘Where did those moves come from?’” he says. “People don’t know me as a dancer. And I go, ‘I think that was James.’ I literally think that was James giving me some sort of gift from the beyond, where all of a sudden, I was moving more freely than I’d ever been able to.”

Born in Kolkata and raised in a nomadic childhood that pinballed between Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Singapore before landing in a boarding school in Rhode Island at the age of sixteen, Shankar carries fragments of India with him. “I’m not just talking about Bollywood. There’s a theme of seeing things from multiple points of view,” he clarifies. He also points to how Devil May Cry is “incredibly music-driven” as something that’s drawing from Indian visual storytelling. To that end, “Afterlife” by Evanescence is a powerful part of the sixth episode of season one, even earning a nomination for Best Original Song in a TV Show/Limited Series at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards last year.

Shankar got his start with Castlevania in 2017, which became one of Netflix’s early flagship originals and helped establish the OTT platform’s appetite for serious, dark, faithfully adapted animated content. “I got in when it was a startup,” he says. The association has continued with 2023’s Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, a shared-universe experiment drawing from Ubisoft properties like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry that received strong reviews and cultivated a devoted fanbase, even if the crossover moment Shankar had envisioned hasn’t fully materialized yet.

“I feel responsible for the anime snowball effect in the West,” he says matter-of-factly. On Captain Laserhawk specifically: “I don’t think that impact is over. I just think it’s a little ahead of its time. It’ll be copied more downstream.”

Shankar also mentions legacy during our conversation and returns to talk about Van Der Beek’s lasting impression. “He [Van Der Beek] was someone who read the Bhagavad Gita. He would quote it to me.”

That’s an actor from rural Connecticut, beloved for a teen drama, quoting scripture to a Kolkata-born showrunner during the making of an animated series about a demon hunter. “People in India would be kind of surprised to learn that our culture has an impact on people over there. That they take it in and kind of espouse it. It’s not just a greeting card over there,” Shankar says.