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Abby Govindan talks about the dark side of stand up
Apr 17, 2025
Stand-up comic Abby Govindan sits down with Natasha to talk about her off-Broadway debut in New York City as one of the youngest touring comedians in the United States. Using humor to heal, Abby talks openly about the dark side of her meteoric rise - almost taking her own life - and gets candid about her struggles with mental health and going viral on social media.
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0:00
Hey guys, at 27, she's one of the youngest comedians touring in the country and she's really funny
0:06
I am Abby Govinden, I'm a stand-up comedian and today I'm here talking with Natasha
0:12
Do you feel like, are you finding comedy to be lucrative financially
0:16
Great question. This, oh my god, I love this question because it's obviously what everyone wants to ask
0:22
But they always find clever ways to skirt around it. Like, are you making, are you getting rich off comedy
0:27
I'm not getting rich off comedy. So it's a little bit frustrating, actually, because it feels like, well, with the off-Broadway run, I just finished up two weeks off-Broadway and it felt like everyone made money off of it except me
0:39
Like I netted zero, even though we sold so many tickets and we blew the venue away in terms of ticket sales
0:46
But that really just goes to show how expensive like off-Broadway productions are
0:50
How was the run overall? It was really good. It was really, really good. I the feedback was insanely positive. I got a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise gotten
1:00
I met a lot of other people. I met a lot of people that I wouldn't have otherwise met. Like I'm here sitting across from you on talking with Natasha because my publicist scheduled me for Fox five with you
1:11
And you enjoyed our segment so much that you invited me back. I love your story
1:16
I just love how I love how like self-aware you are. And I mean, you got we all we talk about comedy
1:21
We talk about humor, but there's like a dark side to what you've been through
1:25
I mean, you were down in the trenches. You had in the trenches. You were in the trenches
1:30
Talk to me about that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was really depressed for a long time
1:37
And the show is literally about surviving a suicide attempt. And then after my suicide attempt, I think my parents also realized, oh, wow, we almost lost our daughter
1:48
We'd never want that to be the case ever again. And so all of us made an active effort towards being in a better place with one another and with ourselves
1:58
And I'm really, really grateful that I've reached rock bottom because I wouldn't be here sitting across from you if I hadn't gone to the lowest point in my life and built myself back up
2:12
And also, the story that I tell, it's a really harrowing one
2:16
It's one that I'm very proud of. It's one that I survived. it's also one that's like steeped in privilege you know like I was struggling with bipolar
2:24
too and I was struggling with mental illness but at the end of the day I was hospitalized because
2:30
my parents had insurance that covered it and the insurance covered like 90 percent so my parents
2:35
still owed you know I think we owed the hospital like two thousand dollars or something and because
2:41
my parents are well off they were able to afford that and so I always try to remind myself that
2:46
there are people like me who are struggling with these issues who don't have the resources to get
2:50
the help that I got. And so it's a story that I'm proud of, but it's a story that, like I said
2:54
is steeped in privilege. And so going to the hospital, coming out, recovering kind of made
3:00
me even more passionate about all these issues that I'm already very passionate about. Like it
3:04
made me even more passionate about universal health care because I was like, if you are
3:08
struggling with any health issues, mental or otherwise, you shouldn't have to rely on being
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lucky enough to be born to rich parents to be able to get access to resources like anyone and
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everyone in in this country in the United States of America the wealthiest country in the world
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should be able to readily have access to health the health care that they need and that their
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government has the means to provide and just chooses not to and do you feel like also some
3:33
of the free resources may may not be the best resources too I mean like the kind of therapist
3:39
that you pick right if they're free they might not be the best you might not get the help that
3:43
you want. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, was on the public health care option in New York
3:53
for a while because I didn't make enough money to have my own to pay for health care from from
3:59
doing stand up comedy. And I had a therapist who was just really bad. Like I was going through a
4:05
breakup and she kept telling me to get back together with my ex-boyfriend. I'm so serious
4:09
us and I was like oh my god this is so terrible I mean how is it that like you you are basically
4:14
therapizing your therapist where you're like wait what's wrong with you yeah literally and so like
4:20
the free resources are really nice but I think the the issue that comes with that is that we have the
4:28
the means to just make this accessible for everyone like I have so many friends who are living and
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thriving in Europe because they have access to all the health care resources that they need
4:39
And of course, like I'm not saying that there's not issues with the European system
4:43
like wait times are a long time, whatever. But I think that with the United States
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with how wealthy we are and how, you know, how top notch our medical services are
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there really is no reason that we should be gatekeeping it from people without as much money
4:59
slipping into depression was that a result from coming out to your parents and it's funny I say
5:05
coming out like as Indian coming out is like saying hey I don't want to be a doctor and engineer
5:10
but doing that uh is that kind of like their response being like you always embarrass us had to be
5:18
traumatizing it's a lot oh for sure well so I remember my dad picked me up from um the airport
5:24
at Thanksgiving break and I told him in the car like I was like I'm doing stand-up comedy like
5:30
I'm going to open mic several times a week like I really want to do something with this and he was just literally like just went off on me he was just like every other one of our friends
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kids like does something normal they do marketing like you ever since you've been a kid have always
5:44
been the odd one out like why why do you do this to us like what did we do in a past life to deserve
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having you as a kid oh my gosh which of course is a terrible thing to hear but now I mean now I tour
5:54
all over the country and kids that I went to temple camp with temple class with went to elementary
6:00
middle high school with all these kids that I used to be so envious of at a younger age because I was
6:05
like you guys figured out what you wanted to do so early on and I always felt like the odd one out
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now they're coming up to me after shows being like yeah you know I only pursued computer science
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because I thought it was what my parents wanted of me but I'm not happy like I want to do something
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else. A couple of kids that I went to temple class with, like a non-zero amount, more than one amount
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like at least four or five now, have been like, yeah, I want to be a stand-up comedian like you
6:28
Wow, you're inspiring people. Yeah, which like it would have been, it wouldn't have been thinkable
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for me in 2017 when I was at my lowest, when my parents were telling me that I was embarrassing
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them, when I was like, is there something wrong with me? Why don't I have love for, you know
6:43
science or math the way all these other Indian kids seem to have so seamlessly. But now I'm
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really glad that I stuck to my gut. Like I realized that now I was just so unwilling to
6:54
waver or compromise on my desires. And I'm really glad that I did that so early on because now I'm a
6:59
full time stand up comedian. I'm 27. I'm one of the youngest touring comics in the country in
7:05
general, let alone for like women or women of color. And so I'm really, really grateful that I
7:10
have this journey to really point to and be like, this is what happens when you know what you want
7:16
and you just go after it and do nothing else. I mean, the thing with stand-up comedy is you have
7:21
to find laughter in your daily experiences And so one thing I am envious of my peers of is I have a lot of stand comedy friends who worked other jobs before they started doing stand comedy Kind of like the experience gets built in Exactly yeah like um they live life a little longer Yeah they have more life experience
7:41
to draw on so me I don't really have any work experiences to draw stand-up comedy stories from
7:47
it's just more life experiences but like my friends who are teachers my friends who worked in
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you know the service industry my friends who worked in marketing or corporate jobs before
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they started doing stand-up they have this like wealth of experience to draw from stories from
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so um it's all a give and take like it depends on when you decide to take stand-up comedy seriously
8:08
I'm just really grateful that I really took it seriously super super early on because I was like
8:13
okay I'm gonna make this happen no matter what and I like did I refuse to compromise on it
8:17
and I'm I'm so grateful that that what do you love about stand-up comedy
8:21
god what isn't there to love about stand-up well i'll tell you this um i hate the idea of being
8:30
famous i think i've always hated the idea of being famous i have grown up watching women be torn down
8:36
my entire life and i always knew that i could never handle that um especially as someone who
8:41
was hospitalized for a suicide attempt i'm constantly measuring what my mental health
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can and can't handle and i feel like if right now at this point in my life if i were to be the victim
8:51
of like a humongous hate train on TikTok, the way that Rachel Zegler was
8:55
the way that Hailey Bieber is currently being hate trained on TikTok. I don't know if I would be able to survive
9:00
I'd like to think that I'd be able to survive it, but I don't know. So everything about, and I've been watching women be torn down my whole life
9:08
you know, like Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Mindy Haling, Jamila Jamil. But more recently, it seems to have gotten worse
9:14
Like the vitriol is so bad. The vitriol is so bad. You just need to piss off like a couple of people on TikTok
9:19
and they decide that no one likes you. and they're picking apart your whole life
9:23
They're finding videos of you from when you were 13, 14. They're finding pictures. They're finding people who had one negative interaction
9:28
with you over a decade ago. And so in that sense, I always knew
9:32
that I never wanted to be famous. But I love stand-up comedy so much
9:37
that I love stand-up comedy more than I hate the idea of being famous. So that was kind of a measurement that I did to myself
9:43
I said, okay, if you have one or two stand-up clips, blow up, or if a streamer comes to you tomorrow
9:49
and says, hey, we want to buy a special, and then you get a special and then overnight you blow up, you get millions of followers
9:55
and then everyone decides that they hate you arbitrarily the way they do for so many women
10:00
When you do that mental math, and when I say you, I mean me, like when I do that mental math
10:04
is stand up worth the potential of being the internet's like woman that they hate of the day
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week, month, what have you? And to me, the answer is yes. Like the amount of joy that I feel every
10:18
time I get on stage, every time I connect with audiences and make them laugh, to me is worth the
10:23
wager of, okay, like even if you become this woman that people hate train on TikTok, Twitter
10:32
Instagram, what have you, you know that the joy you derive from storytelling on stage and connecting
10:38
with people is much, much better than any negative thing anyone can say about you. And that is mental
10:47
math that I've done and I'm happy with. Um, it is sad though, because I mean, like I've been
10:54
offered, um, I've never been offered a role, but I've been offered auditions for TV and movie roles
11:01
where my agents pretty candidly were like, you have, uh, an advantage here. They're looking for
11:07
a very specific type of person and you have an advantage. So if you audition specific person
11:12
like, like I've gotten a couple of roles where they were like, we're looking like one, one in
11:16
particular, they were specifically looking for an Indian standup, Indian woman standup
11:20
Oh, that is like ultra specific. Yeah, exactly. And so, um, but I passed on that role because I
11:25
wasn't comfortable with, um, I wasn't comfortable with what the role entailed. And I, I mean
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I shouldn't say I passed on that role cause that implies that they offered it to me. But essentially what they said is, um, we're looking for a female South Asian standup comedian. If you
11:40
audition, you'll have an edge up on like all the other thousands of people who are also auditioning
11:45
for this role. And what the role entailed was not anything that I was comfortable with. And I was
11:49
also doing the mental math of like, okay, am I so passionate about this role that if my visibility
11:56
goes up tomorrow and then again, like I become the woman of the week, month, what have you
12:01
that's hate trained, will I be so passionate about this role that it's worth all that visibility
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And the mental math that I do for most roles, the answer ends up being no. I auditioned for
12:11
a couple of roles that I was really, really passionate about, that I was excited about
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Like my friend Zarna Garg is, got her own TV show and she's such an immensely talented
12:22
Indian standup comedian. And I auditioned for the role of her daughter in the show. I didn't
12:27
end up getting chosen. And you know, like I, so I believe in her creative vision. So I'm sure that
12:33
whoever they went with is like immensely talented and better fit for the role. But I loved the slides
12:39
that they sent me for the role because the central conflict of the show
12:43
without giving away too much, is between the eldest daughter and her parents
12:48
and a major decision that the eldest daughter makes. And I loved it so much
12:52
I mean, because I feel like that's something you went through personally. Exactly, exactly. So, like, I read the slides
12:57
And are you the eldest in your family? Wow, yeah. Yeah, I read the slides and I was like, I love everything about this
13:03
I would love to audition for this show. And so I'm always doing that kind of mental math when I'm auditioning for TV shows
13:08
and movies of like, I am very happy with the level of visibility I have right now. I have
13:13
the small cult following that sells out most, if not all my shows, I'm able to pay my mortgage
13:18
I'm able to buy nice cat food for my cat. I'm able to buy my groceries. Yeah, exactly. Um
13:24
because I mean, yeah, I, uh, don't know if my mental health could handle, um, like hyper
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visibility, you know, and I've watched, especially like so many South Asian celebrities before
13:35
me get torn apart by our own people by the diaspora and do you like are you are you kind of
13:43
like with your therapist without getting too much into it but like this idea of fear I mean are you
13:48
addressing it is that it seems to come up a lot like the fear of virality and then what that's
13:55
gonna do you know yeah so um I think that fear is healthy when you have a good relationship with it
14:04
when you have a bad relationship with it, it becomes anxiety. And so I think I've struck this
14:09
very healthy balance of like, what can I handle in this moment right now? And what can't I handle
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And so I'm constantly again, like doing the mental math. It takes a lot of self-awareness
14:19
Yeah. And I'm really, I mean, like that's again, I really loved my time in the hospital and I loved
14:25
after I was discharged, I went to group therapy every day from like 9am to 5pm. Like it was a
14:30
full-time job, but I really love the skills that I learned. I learned a lot of resilience. I learned
14:35
to control what I can control and let go of what I can't control. And, um, yeah, I think that I'm
14:42
better off because of it. And I think I have a very healthy relationship with fear. Like I think that
14:49
tomorrow if a streamer was like we want to buy your hour and we love to publish it somewhere I would be really scared but then I would also just kind of force myself to enjoy the moment as it comes as opposed to being afraid of like what the worst things that could happen are
15:06
yeah I really want to talk to you about that Emily in Paris tweet let's let's dissect uh okay wait just explain to everyone like what was the tweet that you like
15:19
just spent out so there was a show called emily in paris it was the most watched tv show of the
15:25
pandemic and um in 2021 i just tweeted that i created it like for no reason in particular um
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and it just went like mega viral i think that the first one went so viral that everyone was like this
15:37
must be the creator of emily in paris like half the people who liked it and retweeted it knew it
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was a joke and the other half didn't but then like it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy and then yeah a bunch of news outlets reached out to me and they reported on it as if I was the
15:50
creator of Emily in Paris and then BBC reached out a journalist from the BBC reached out and she was
15:55
like I'd love to talk to you about your tv show Emily in Paris it's so interesting that you said
15:59
because I I tweeted I was like Emily in Paris is originally supposed to be about an Indian girl
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but when I pitched it the network execs fit in my face and called me racial slurs the following week
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I repished the exact same concept with a white girl, and now I'm nominated for two Golden Globes
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And so I'm from the BBC reached out, and she was like, it's so interesting how Emily in Paris was originally supposed to be
16:20
about an Indian girl. I was like, you're with the BBC? And you didn't do your research
16:24
And you didn't do your research. Well, evidently, what I didn't know, I was credited as the creator on Wikipedia
16:30
I did know that. What I didn't know. What? Yeah, what I didn't know
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That's crazy. And I'll send you a screenshot. I don't know if there's a visual component to this podcast
16:37
I'll send you a screenshot where it says, Created by Abby Guvendon. But that's fine
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Anyone can edit Wikipedia. So that was always really funny to me
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What I just found out last week, like a full four years after this happened, last week my friend was like, hey, did you know that for like a solid six months
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you were also credited as the creator on IMDb? And IMDb is not open to the public for editing
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You have to have like credentials to edit IMDb. So I guess that's the reason that like all of these like journalists
17:05
thought that I created Emily in Paris. Like someone earnestly went to IMDb, added my name to the creative buy list
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And then they're like, yeah, this checks out. And then everyone was like, yeah, this checks out. Like they did their research and they went on IMDb and my name was there
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And they were like, yep, makes sense. And I was like, I was a 22 year old comedian living at home with my parents
17:25
You guys really think I created Emily in Paris? And it was just really funny
17:29
It really changed my life overnight. Like so many production companies that have made the coolest movies you can think of
17:36
so many actors and comedians that I had looked up to my whole life reached out to me and they were
17:39
like hey we see what you're doing we want to help you increase your platform so you can like say and
17:44
do this to more people to more people and so that they can like hear your comedy more and I think it
17:48
was the very first time that I was like watching people resonate and laugh at things that I was
17:55
saying in real time by the millions like there's this was millions of people got involved there
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There were news articles written about it. My social media following doubled overnight
18:06
It was crazy. Did you come out and say, by the way, I'm not the creator
18:11
No, but you know what's hilarious? I just started taking credit for every single bad piece of media
18:20
What was really funny is Ginny in Georgia came out. Ginny in Georgia is not a bad TV show
18:25
but there was one line that got so much hate where the main girl, I think her name is Ginny
18:30
she was like uh what do you know you've dated more guys than taylor swift and everyone was like this
18:37
is so bad yeah everyone was like this is a really sexist line you're making a comment about taylor
18:41
stuff's like dating life whatever so i tweeted like hey guys as the creator of jenny and georgia
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i just want to let you know that that was my line and i stand by it so i said that right the emily
18:50
in paris prank had gone on for like six months i never relented i never once said this is a bit
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like i was always like people would be like are you really the creator of emily in paris and i'd
18:59
be like on twitter i'd be like yes i'm the creator of emily in paris but the moment i said hey guys
19:03
as the creator of jinny and georgia i okayed this line and i stand by it as a joke the swifties came
19:09
from my throat oh they were like sending me death threats calling me ugly yeah and the tweet was up
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for like 12 minutes where i was like as the creator of jinny and georgia i stand by this line like i
19:22
refuse to back down and then swifties started sending me death threats and i immediately was
19:25
like guys it's a bit it's a joke it's a joke it's a joke i'm one of you like i'm such a hardcore
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and then everyone was like it's so funny how you were unrelenting with emily in paris but the
19:36
moment you came head to head with the swifties you backed so did netflix never like clarify
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by the way she's not or the production company that actually makes emily in paris anyone
19:46
no so um so when bbc reached out and asked to talk to me i was like yes i want to do it i was
19:54
like let me bore at it this is my bore at moment like my my biggest comedic inspirations at the
19:59
time and still of course um were like Sacha Baron Cohen I've seen Borat like a gajillion times and
20:05
Nathan Fielder I've watched Nathan for you like a million times that show is hilarious so I was
20:10
like this is my Sacha Baron Cohen moment this is my Nathan Fielder moment like I'm gonna go in
20:14
there and be like yes my tv show Emily in Paris like I was ready like I I like called a bunch of
20:19
my actor friends and I was like help me keep a straight face my manager was like you cannot do
20:24
that, Netflix will sue you. And I love Netflix. I love Netflix. Big fan of their work. Didn't want
20:29
to please give her a special. He's I did not want to upset them at all. But I was like, no
20:36
like Netflix wouldn't do that. They're like the arbiters of comedy. Like they're such they they're
20:41
like they get it. They're cool. Yeah, they're super cool. But then they did end up suing a couple of
20:45
other girls after me for doing a parody of like Bridgerton, I believe. And I think her name was
20:50
Abby as well and then I was like oh yeah Netflix will sue which as is you're right Netflix although
20:56
I am a big I'm a big fan of the girls that got sued by Netflix but I'm also a big fan of Netflix
21:00
I'm trying to play both sides yeah I get it what do you do when like when you're like not killing
21:05
out there you know oh my god I opened for uh Nimesh Patel do you know who Nimesh Patel is I've
21:11
heard the name he's a very famous comedian and his Netflix special is coming out this week actually
21:16
Oh, okay. Yeah. Very talented. And he DM'd me and he asked if I would open for him in New York
21:23
I went and I opened for him and it was clear that his audience did not like me, which is fine
21:27
It's totally fine. Like, I... What do you mean clear? What's going on
21:31
I wasn't bombing, but I wasn't doing as well as I was used to doing. I'm so used to..
21:35
I mean, when you're a comedian and you have the cult following that I do, you're so used to people coming, expecting your sense of humor
21:42
Yeah. but I was opening for him so the audience was there for him and his sense of humor and it was
21:48
clear that my jokes were not resonating with them as much as I was used used to my audiences
21:53
resonating with my comedy so I was and it was such a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense
21:58
because I got there and I already felt so left out like I was the only woman backstage I was the
22:03
youngest one there um they initially turned me away like I tried to enter backstage they turned
22:07
me away because they thought I was a fan which is fine like I'm not you know like Nimesh is so famous
22:12
he sells out all the shows like I get why they would think that some like Indian
22:16
woman in her 20s that really happened you know yeah some Indian woman in her 20s trying to
22:19
come backstage as a fan but it really undercut my confidence like I was
22:23
just like I already felt like I don belong here getting turned away at the door like really made me feel even more like I didn belong And so then I hopped on stage and I could tell really quickly the audience wasn resonating with my material
22:35
And then I started feeling nervous in a way that I haven't in years. Like, I've been doing this for so long
22:39
I've been doing it full time for three years. And I know I'm confident in my ability to elicit laughter from an audience
22:45
but when it wasn't going the way that I planned, I was like, oh, my God
22:48
Like, I'm terrible. I should just quit. What do you do in that moment? I feel like it's my job to make you laugh
22:55
So if I'm not making you laugh, that's not your fault. That's my fault. Like I have to be doing the mental math on stage of like, what can I say next
23:01
That'll make them enjoy themselves more. And I was doing a lot of pivoting on stage because I was like trying to find something
23:08
that this audience would like. And it was clear they didn't like me very much, which is totally fine
23:14
Like that's your prerogative. You don't have to like every single audience. And I walked off stage and just feeling more shaken than I had in years
23:21
like I was like oh my god should I apologize to him should I be like I'm so sorry like you don't
23:27
even have to pay me for that like this is crazy but I was just like you know really anxious in a
23:32
way that I hadn't been since my like open mic days like I was like oh my god I don't belong here
23:35
like I need to move back to Texas I don't know what I was thinking by doing stand-up comedy
23:40
but then his opener went on stage his opener Mookie very talented um and Mookie I had I had
23:49
kind of, I mean, the point of the opener is to get the audience riled up so that when the main act
23:55
comes on stage, they're ready. I don't want to say I deflated the audience, but I like one step
24:00
short of deflated the audience. Like I could tell I hopped off when I hopped off stage, they weren't as high energy as an opener is, is supposed to have them. But within like 10 seconds, Mookie
24:10
hopped on stage and they were eating out of the palm of his hand. And then Mookie does his 10
24:15
minutes and then he hops off stage and then Nimesh hops on stage and then again within like 20 seconds
24:21
the audience is like eating out of the palm of his hand like they're on this ride with him he's
24:25
like doing all these new jokes and old jokes and everyone's laughing having the time of their life
24:30
and in that moment I realized that how I feel doesn't matter what I take away from the experience
24:37
is what matters because I can't be bitter about doing poorly if this is what I'm gonna do for a
24:44
living like I am not a hobby comedian you know like if you're a hobby painter and then you give
24:51
a gift of a painting to a friend obviously that painting is not going to be like amazing right
24:58
like as opposed to like a professional painter but when you're a professional painter and this
25:02
is what you do for a living and this is what you tell everyone you do for a living then when people
25:06
hire you to paint for them they expect top-notch product and that's kind of the same with me as a
25:14
stand-up comedian. Like, I can't go around telling people I'm a stand-up comedian if I'm incapable of
25:18
making an audience enjoy themselves when I'm on stage. So that's what I realized in that moment
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I was like, I need to learn from this experience. Like, I need to make it so that every audience
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that I get up in front of at the end of my set is enjoying themselves so thoroughly because I'm a
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professional and this is what I claim to do full-time, so I need to start acting like it
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And, you know, I'm still so early in my stand-up journey. Like, I've only been doing this seven
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years but I'm such a insanely better comedian than I was seven years ago and seven years from now I'll
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be even better than I am right now and with stand-up comedy I think that it's kind of really
25:54
healed my relationship with aging because as women we're made to feel like getting older means that
25:59
you lose value but with stand-up comedy getting older is really the only way you gain value you
26:05
got that experience what's next for you what do you got going on well I am doing shows in Australia
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That's crazy. I'm like so excited for Australia. I'm doing shows in Europe
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I'm currently booking a Europe tour. I'm really trying to make India work with everything in me
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That would be so great. I love being Indian. I love it
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I love being Indian. And Bangalore and Mumbai are my two most requested international cities
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And Chennai is my parents' hometown. So obviously I want to perform there
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it's just like there's a lot of logistical issues to overcome to book an Indian tour but I just
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god I love being Indian so much what do you love about being Indian I think that
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I think that being Indian has made me such a well-rounded person like I was uh traversing
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the Amazon jungle in Colombia in December and I stayed with this indigenous family like deep deep
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deep in the jungle and um you know it was very go with the flow like I got in I got to their house
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um in the middle of the jungle and they were like actually we don't have running water uh we just
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shower in the lake and I was like all right let's go and then they were like um oh we don't have a
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lot of vegetarian options so we'll just like whip something up for you really quickly or like they
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were like oh we always wake up at like 6 a.m and like go walk towards the sunrise and all of those
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things were things that I had done growing up visiting India so I was like ready for it like I
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I think it made me a much more flexible person. I love being South Indian
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I love South Indian culture. I think, like, I've been doing this press tour. It's my first press tour of my career
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And the most common question that people ask me, they're like, how does your Indian identity affect your comedy
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And I'm like, it doesn't. Like, I'm just a goofy person who happens to be Indian
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And, like, I think that when I was younger, I was so allergic to being Indian
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Like, I used to do anything to fit in. And then when I got a little bit older, like in my adolescence, I overcorrected a little bit where I was like leaning so heavy into being Indian because I love that it made me different
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And now I'm neither this nor that. Like if you look at my Spotify on repeat playlist, it's a mixture of like pop music and South Indian music and Spanish music
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I'm really into Spanish music. And I think that. my what bad bunny bad bunny young miko um cardi b you know like i think that
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i think that being indian is just so a part of who i am and i think the question needs to be less
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how does your indian identity affect your comedy and the question needs to be more
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or it's not even a question it should just be more of like it's so cool that indian people are
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allowed to just be goofy. Yeah. Yeah. Like I think that like I really like the TV show Deli Boys if
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you've seen it because it's just two like Pakistani boys who find out that their dad is a major drug
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dealer and it's just like a goofy show and they just happen to be Pakistani. It's there's no
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reconciliation with their identity. They're no like oh like here's the trauma I have from like
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being in a brown family whatever. It's just like two goofy guys who are stuck in a goofy storyline
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and they happen to be Pakistani as well and I feel like that's really what I'm trying to epitomize
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Like I am Indian and I am a standup comedian and I don't go on stage saying like, here's how being Indian affects me in my day to day life
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It's just who I am. Where can people get tickets for what you got going on
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Your show's coming up. Oh, my God. This is a Talking with Natasha exclusive
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So excited. I am doing a victory lap tour. So tickets sold so well that I'm going to do another round of shows across the country and the world
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And that will be announced in the coming weeks. So you can go on abbygovinden.com slash off-Broadway for tickets
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So great to talk to you. You too. This was so fun. Thank you so much for having me
29:58
Thank you
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