"It was kind of a fluke," he said. "When I went in for this part, it actually was written as my father. The character was 55 years old. The father who died was the original character. I thought it was a mistake. I left the audition, went outside and called my agent. I said, "There are a bunch of older guys here, and me. I know you haven't seen me in awhile but come on - I haven't gotten that old.' "

The agent told him not to worry about it.

"Tim Kring (the show's creator) liked the audition and he actually went back and rewrote the entire pilot," said Ramamurthy. "He changed the character to be the son of the (older) guy."

Kring gave the casting story an added twist. Asked what impressed him about Ramamurthy's audition, Kring said: "Well, some of it is fairly obvious. I found him charming and striking.

"It was written for a 55-year-old man and he brought this whole other angle to it that I never ever imagined," said Kring. "A light bulb went off. I thought this was a lot more interesting if he was talking about his father and his father died and he followed in his footsteps. I could work with the archetype of the idea of a son trying to fulfill a father's destiny."

"That plays into what the show is. A giant archetype. I think part of the show's success is that people really get who these people are because they are big giant archetypes - the cop, the cheerleader, the dreamer. In other series, you can't tell one character from another."

Ramamurthy's audition also led Kring to add a narrator. Ramamurthy, whose family is from the southern part of India, said he uses a British accent and a British-Indian accent at times.

"He has one of the most beautiful speaking voices on the planet," said Kring. "It is so gorgeous. There was no narration originally. It wasn't in the script. It came because of him."

Ramamurthy, however, doesn't know what he is narrating. "I'm assured that is going to be explained," he said. "I don't know what it is - if it is coming from a journal. I have purposely not asked. I don't want to know yet."