‘IT’S SHOW TIME’
Comedian Aparna Nancherla parlays her anxiety into career success
Aparna Nancherla used to walk onstage, grab the microphone and greet her audiences this way: “It’s OK, guys — I’m surprised I’m a comedian, too!”
As far as the audience knew, it was a stereotype joke; a reflection on the dearth of demure-looking South Asian women wearing barrettes and print dresses in comedy.
But to her parents, that line is an essential truth. And it’s the core of their daughter’s triumph.
After all, Aparna was the toddler who tore holes in her mother’s saris by clinging so tight. The little girl whose parents had her practise making eye contact with them, so that she could someday do it with others.
If you had told Ananth Nancherla that his shy second daughter would some day make a living performing hilarious 30-minute monologues in front of hundreds of people, that she would star in her own television specials and have half a million online followers devouring her insights, he would have said, “Keep dreaming.” A future in intergalactic space travel might have seemed more likely.
There were flashes. Not of humour, always, but persistence.
As a nine- or 10-year-old in McLean, Va., Aparna would quake when her parents asked her to bring the bill to the Pizza Hut cashier.
“Painfully, she would take it to them,” recalls Aparna’s mom, Suchithra Nancherla. “And then when she came back with the four mints, she was so proud of herself. She’d say: ‘I did it! Look what they gave me!’”
She conquered herself, then and so many times since. Gathering material along the way.
A couple of decades later, Aparna would tweet one of her best-known jokes: “Any pizza can be a personal one if you cry while you eat it.”
If each life presents forks in the road, they are not always as divergent as the one Aparna faced as she chose between colleges. It came down to two prestigious schools: Amherst College, an idyllic New England liberal arts school, and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.
Her parents — both doctors who immigrated from India — were terrified by the prospect of their introverted daughter joining the army, but not surprised. Aparna had developed an impassioned patriotism writing letters to soldiers during the Gulf War. And she’d always challenged herself.
She took college-level courses during middle school. She chose rigorous hiking excursions over traditional summer camp. In high school, she excelled academically but also joined the cross-country team. It would make her father cry, sometimes, to see his daughter struggling up hills at the end of long runs, but she never quit.
He nearly cried again — with relief — when Aparna chose Amherst. She majored in psychology, but wasn’t convinced it was her career path. And soon she was gripped by psychological problems of her own. Issues around eating and depression led her to take time off in the spring of her sophomore year.
That stretch at home led to a surprising decision: to tell jokes during an open-mike night.
“I think it was because I went on antidepressants,” Aparna, 36, says from a café near her Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment. “You get this euphoric boost that is more than what is normal in your stable mood. You’re in this honeymoon period where you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could experience life in these frequencies.’ I really think that’s how I ended up doing it the first time. Because I don’t think I would’ve otherwise had the courage.”
Aparna’s older sister, Bhavana Nancherla, came along for Aparna’s comedy debut. To Bhavana, Aparna was like “one of those flowers that only bloom for five minutes a day.
“The conditions had to be exactly right, but when they were she was this amazing character,” Bhavana says. “There was this absurdist humour. She would occasionally drop into it, and it would be just glorious to witness.”
In 2010, after four years of openmike sets in D.C., Aparna moved to Los Angeles with a boyfriend. There she found an administrative job, a manager and a growing reputation for her subtle, offbeat humour. Still, there were no big breaks.
Then she got a call to come to New York to write for the FX show Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell. For the first time, she had a full-time job in comedy.
When that show ended in late 2013, she supported herself doing standup until she was hired to write for NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers. The gig was prestigious, but not a perfect fit.
But as she left the show in the spring of 2016, it felt to her “like the universe held out a net.” Her standup bookings increased. She put out a comedy album. She was cast in a brief but memorable role on Aziz Ansari’s Netflix show Master of None. She was hired to voice a recurring character on Netflix’s adult animated comedy BoJack Horseman and won the role of a discontented human resources manager on the Comedy Central show Corporate. Increasingly, her mental-health struggles became a recurring theme in her comedy.
In her new half-hour special — part of Netflix’s The Standups — Aparna talks about what it’s like to have anxiety. “If you’re an anxious person it’s kind of like: ‘Well, you know, this is what we train for. This is our Olympics. All those nights awake — it’s show time.’”
There was this absurdist humour.
She would occasionally drop into it, and it would be just glorious to witness.