Aparna Nancherla is Not Completely Depressing

Yeah, a lot of people felt very lost and dejected after the election. I think many artists were figuring out what they wanted to say after that, and what they wanted to do with their time on stage. It feels like it’s hard to not talk about it—it’s hard to ignore—but a lot of people are going to comedy shows right now to escape the news a little bit. So it does feel like a balance of addressing what’s going on without getting too entrenched in the horror of it. Also trying to have a little distance from it, and to have somewhat of a take on it that’s not completely depressing.

I definitely go back and forth. Sometimes things are just terrible and it’s really hard to find a way to make light of it. But I think it also feels like it’s more important to talk about stuff than to not talk about it. There has to be a way to address it even if it’s going to be really tricky and delicate.

One of the biggest things is that the digital landscape has really blown up. YouTube was just hitting its stride when I started, and then Facebook came in, and then Twitter and Snapchat. I feel like those opened up the playing field for more people to create content, and for more people to try and be funny for strangers. A lot of comedy writing has been opened up. In terms of stand-up itself, there’s more of a demand for artists that are more outside the typical norm of the straight white male. I think people are eager to see other types of people represented.

I had a few parts on the last season of Inside Amy Schumer earlier that year, but yeah, that was my first scripted series. Since then, I’ve done Crashing that just came out on HBO and a guest part on Season 2 of Master of None. I also got a part on Corporate on Comedy Central. It’s about this giant evil corporation and the employees in it, and I play the HR girl.

It is a little disheartening that only a select few types of people get carte blanche in Hollywood to keep making stuff forever, but the good thing is that a lot of them have production companies. I feel like they are good about looking for newer voices, and for things that people haven’t seen before. So, that’s the positive side to it, I hope.

There’s a whole bunch of people in New York that I always love to watch. A lot of them started in Brooklyn and put on independent shows there. Like Julio Torres has an amazing, ethereal POV and he writes for SNL now, so he’s definitely onto big things. Anna Fabrega is another great experimental comic, and so is Jo Firestone, who is someone I also love to collaborate with. There are lots of young, exciting new voices out there right now.

I feel very fortunate that she sort of took me under her wing. I first met her when I was living in DC and she started a comedy festival called Bentzen Ball there. And then a few years later, she asked me if I wanted to record an album on her new label—that was very surreal.

I hadn’t even thought of recording an album up until that point, I just thought I wasn’t really ready. But when she came to me with that offer I was sort of like, "well, I can’t not do it," so, I did. Then she let me open for her at her HBO taping, and Carnegie Hall this past fall. I just feel like she’s a very kind and good person, she’s very encouraging to me but not in a showy way. In a very quiet and cool way.

I think that is very much a part of my sense of self. Feeling like a fraud a lot of the time. I know that’s common in creative people, and I think it’s common in women too. I’m not abnormal in that sense, but it is nice that people give you a reality check every so often, and are like, "no, you can do this," and then you’ll be like, "well, I guess I’ve got to do this then."

I guess I started talking about it as a way to deal with my own inner demons. I was having trouble creating anything in general. I was going through a depressive patch. So I just started writing about it because I was at a loss to write about anything else. Then I did some of that material on stage and I found that people really responded to it. It made me want to delve into it further.

With stage fright you don’t want the audience to know that you’re not sure of what you’re doing, but if you talk about your anxiety it takes some of the charge away from it. So in that sense it’s been helpful.

Right, right, yeah.

There is that model of a curmudgeonly comedian who has all these neuroses and is constantly battling with the world. To tackle those subjects as a woman of color is kind of a new thing for people to see. It’s rare to see women of color at all in comedy—even though there’s plenty of us there, we’re just not represented as much in bigger media. Also I think because Larry David and Louis C.K. are more the “everyman,” everything they say is translated as universal experience. Whereas, sometimes if you’re more outside the box people have to take another step to meet you where you’re at.