‘This is our Olympics ... it’s show time’
Comedian Nancherla parlays anxiety into standup 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 practice making eye contact with them so that she could someday do it with others. The kid who went hungry, day after day, rather than ask a teacher to help open her lunch box.
If you had told Ananth Nancherla that his painfully 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.
Except ... 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.
Aparna’s mom, Suchithra Nancherla recalls: “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!’ ”
Aparna 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.”
Aparna majored in psychology, but wasn’t convinced it was her career path. And soon she was gripped by issues around eating and depression that 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 at a comedy club.
“I think it was because I went on antidepressants,” Aparna, 36, says from a cafe 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.”
In 2010, after four years of open-mic 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. 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. More than one website crowned her “the funniest person on Twitter.”
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.’ ”