Manish Dayal

Dayal was born to an Indian family in Orangeburg, South Carolina. His parents, Hema and Sudhir Patel, are from Gujarat, India. He has three sisters. He uses his grandfather's first name, Dayal, as his stage surname.^[4] He attended Marshall Elementary School and later went to Heathwood Hall in Columbia, South Carolina. He subsequently obtained a degree in International Business from George Washington University. After he graduated in 2005, he moved to New York to pursue his acting career, and five years later he moved to Los Angeles.^[5][6]

Dayal started his career appearing in national commercials for McDonald's, Windows, Nintendo, and Domino's Pizza. In 2008, he played the lead in The New Group's twice-extended off-Broadway show Rafta, Rafta. He also voiced Mohammed, a taxi driver in Rockstar Games's critically acclaimed video game Grand Theft Auto IV. He played a small role in The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Paula van der Oest's Domino Effect. After guest-starring on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS, Dayal went on to play Hal, a code-breaking computer analyst, on the AMC series Rubicon. Dayal also starred in the romantic comedy Walkaway, which explores love and culture set in New York. In 2010 and 2011, he played Ravi, the smug A-team leader on Outsourced, a comedy series from NBC. He also played Raj Kher, an alternative college student recovering from cancer, in the third and fourth seasons of The CW's 90210.

He starred as Hassan Kadam in The Hundred Foot Journey (2014).^[7] From 2018 to 2023, he has starred in the Fox TV series The Resident.