Typically, South Asian-American TV characters tend to be terrorists, funny foreigners, or quirky best friends. But while several South Asian-American actors have been cast to play sidekicks on this year’s crop of pilots—and even more of them are playing doctors, another stereotype—other roles are breaking the mold. Mouzam Makkar is a lead on ABC’s The Fix, a traditional law drama from the mind of Marcia Clark. Sarayu Blue leads an NBC sitcom about a video-game storyboard artist trying to “have it all.” Vinny Chhibber plays a gay teacher in CBS’s Red Line. Kosha Patel was cast as a lead in ABC’s “comedic soap” False Profits, alongside Vanessa Williams, Bellamy Young, and newcomer Kapil Talwalkar.

The crop also includes CBS’s Pandas in New York, the rare domestic comedy about an Indian-American family—yes, they’re all doctors—and ABC’s The Greatest American Hero reboot, which has been rejiggered to feature TV’s first female Indian-American superhero, played by New Girl’s Hannah Simone.

Not all of these programs will make it to air—but The Greatest American Hero seems like a safe bet for a fall pickup. “Hannah was one of the most sought-after actresses this year. She had multiple offers on the table,” says Claudia Lyon, V.P. of talent and casting at ABC Studios, in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “The broadcast networks need to appeal to broad audiences. So when you cast Hannah Simone, that’s like a game changer.”

An in-demand South Asian-American actress, doing a network TV show created by and produced by South Asian-Americans? We’ve come a long way from the 80s and 90s, when the most prominent Indian face on TV was Apu from The Simpsons—a two-dimensional character comedian Hari Kondabolu has memorably described as “a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father.” And while shows created by white people often still lean on stereotypes when they feature brown characters—arranged marriage comes up frequently—brown creators have been leading the charge for something different.

Lyon, who describes herself as “half Indian, half Hispanic,” traces this tectonic shift to The Office’s Mindy Kaling-written “Diwali” episode, which aired in 2006. Kaling cast her own parents in the half hour, which centered on a ceremony that most Indian Hindus would recognize: a puja celebrating the festival of lights. It was broad enough not to alienate non-Indian audiences, while still incorporating details that would feel viscerally familiar to anyone who shares Kaling’s background—the sumptuous clothing, the food setup, the Bollywood soundtrack mixed with Beyoncé.

Broti Gupta, a comedian and writer for Netflix’s Friends from College, also cites Kaling as an inspiration—particularly for the way her character on The Office, airheaded Kelly Kapoor, subverted expectations audiences may have had for an Indian-American woman.