Latest news with #ZarnaGarg
Fox News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Indian comedian says her career would never be possible back home: ‘Only in America'
Comedian Zarna Garg reveals how she went from being a stay-at-home mom of three to a world-famous comedian during an interview with Fox News Digital.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Zarna Garg Was a Stay-at-Home Mom. Now She's a Comedy Superstar
All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by Glamour editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission. Jim McCambridge/Hulu Zarna Garg spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom before trying her first open mic night. Now the successful comedian has her three kids and her husband help sell merch at sold-out shows, weigh in on stand-up jokes and laugh lines, and take on household tasks so mom can tour the country. 'We are a family operation,' she tells me over Zoom. 'I feel strongly that every mother in America needs to be able to say to her kids, 'You have to help me.' There's nothing wrong with that.' It's not all work, either: At the end of Practical People Win, Zarna's latest comedy special now streaming on Hulu, the whole family joins her onstage for a dance. And it was actually Garg's kids who first encouraged the comedian to try stand-up. They've got good instincts, because within six years the comedian became a headline act at New York's iconic comedy club Caroline's on Broadway, opened for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler on their Restless Leg tour, won Kevin Hart's competition series Lyft Comics, and gained over a million Instagram followers. Her memoir This American Woman, which came out earlier this year, is a New York Times bestseller. Next up? A sitcom in development for CBS with Mindy Kaling and Hart. Watch Practical People Win, and it's clear why Garg's career took off. The comedian is impressively adept at taking things highly specific to her life—everything from her oldest son, 'so handsome,' getting a broken nose to why she wears a bindi—and making them feel somehow relatable and universal. Plus, who doesn't appreciate a good mother-in-law joke? For Garg, it's about making the audience feel like they're part of this family operation. 'I wrote it with a lot of love,' Garg says of her special. 'When I do live shows, I tell people, 'This is a friends and family event.'' Below, we caught up with the comedian about Practical People Win, what it's like parenting as a comedian with a nontraditional schedule, and her best traveling tips. Read on. : Can you walk through your creative process? Where do you find inspiration? Zarna Garg: A lot comes from what's going on in my life at the moment. Like my two older kids—I have a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old—there's a lot of dating drama happening in their lives. The boyfriend said this, and the girlfriend said that. Something will stick in my head, and then it becomes, Oh, this is a funny idea. I'll run with it and try to write something around it. In this hour, I wanted to speak to what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to be Indian in America. The word immigrant has become so loaded and heated in these last few years, and I wanted to bring some levity to it. Everybody's angry on all sides. You're Republican, you're Democrat, you're not even political, and you have very strong feelings. I wanted to bring some humor to the idea of being an immigrant and what we experience on the other side, watching the Americans. I also shared a little bit about what it means to be Indian, like how we cope when everybody around us is angry. So that was the north star, and then the real-life stories kind of kept presenting themselves. Of course, my mother-in-law is a forever presence in my life. She's always doing or saying something that will trigger me. Then it sits in my memory. Now, instead of worrying about it and crying about it, I'm like, That's a joke. Do you keep notes or anything to remember these moments? I don't take notes, because I'm on a stage almost every night. I'm doing an open mic or a show or a spot on somebody else's show every night. So when something happens, I'll try something that same day. I live very in the moment. If it happened, say, this afternoon, then tonight I'll stop by a club and do 10 minutes and just talk about it in the funniest way. I'll work it out, and I'll see. It probably won't get the biggest laughs the first time I try it, but I can usually tell whether the premise is resonating with the audience or not. If it did, then I'll dig deeper and write it down and build it into something. Some premises don't catch. I'm all about entertaining my audience. It's not about what I am entertained by. I'll give you an example: I've been trying to write a father-in-law joke for years. It just doesn't land. Nobody cares. It's like you said in the special—you come at comedy as a business, so if people aren't laughing, you move on to what they want. Yeah, I don't want to change people's minds. I'm not a political comic. I'm not here to prove to somebody that I'm an artist at this level or that level. That's not my idea of what I do. I'm here to serve my audience. They're giving me a very important asset, which is their time, and I take every second, every minute seriously, almost to the point of insanity. My kids will be like, 'Mom, it's okay if it's not a laugh line.' And I'll say, 'No, no, no. That line's got to go.' I'm very, very deliberate about it. I'm a mom myself. I have three kids. I know what it takes to sit in front of a TV for an hour. It's not easy for us. There are so many things going on. If I try to watch my own special, I promise you, 50 people will interrupt me. Some kid will need food, somebody's phone will ring. You've got to be very mindful of people giving up their time. This is the world's most valuable asset: human attention. When you were talking about how much traveling you do in your special, I thought, How does she do it? What is it like parenting with a career that's not a traditional nine to five? I was a stay-at-home mom for 16 years. I couldn't figure it out. I could not. I was like, How is everybody around me doing it? I could not figure it out. All those years are a blur. It was just me being home and chasing them. When my youngest was old enough to go to full-time school, like kindergarten, actual school…because in the early years, it's 10 minutes of school, then you're picking them up. There's no time. So when he was old enough to go to school full time, that's when it became, I have to do something now. Because I was also dying inside. I really wanted to get back to work. Now my kids are older. Two of my kids are adults, and I recruit them. If I need to travel extensively, I make sure my husband's around. He now doesn't have the high-profile job he had for many, many years, so I'll tell him, 'Listen, I need to work, and you have to be home.' He couldn't have done that five years ago. My older son goes to college in upstate New York. I'll call him and be like, 'You need to come back.' They all know they have to help Mom. That's a given. That's not a question mark; it's understood. We have a family chat where all our logistics are managed. I'll be like, 'I need one of you guys to be here and be with the little one.' They understand that's part of their responsibility in this family. It's lovely that you gave so much of your time and now are able to redistribute the load. I feel like American moms feel shy in asking for payback. It's not the American way. I'm not shy about it at all. I don't know that there is any other way. I don't feel like anybody is going to come out to help me. I don't think any of these politicians are going to make a single thing happen for us. In fact, we only lost the things we had. Now I'm very clear with my kids that you have to help me. You owe it to your mom. I'm also a little dramatic about it, I'm not going to lie, but that's how they step up. They're part of this family. This is not a hotel where they're just here to take and leave. They understand that. I talk about it in the special too. I've learned how to have my voice in America. American women taught me that, but I learned the value of community from where I come from. You saw the special. My whole family comes out at the end because they're a part of it, and I want them to have their moment to shine. I want every mom in America to know that it's okay to go to work with your kids. It's okay to bring them. We cannot all be pretending like these children don't exist, or that they're a constant inconvenience. That's one of the biggest struggles of being a working parent in America, that you almost have to pretend like you don't have kids. It's not sustainable. It's already falling apart before our eyes. Everybody is overworked and overstretched. In my own humorous way, I'm trying to address that. My kids are everywhere. Every show, they're selling merch, they're folding merch, they're bringing me food. We are a family operation, and I feel strongly that every mother in America needs to be able to say to her kids, 'You have to help me.' There's nothing wrong with that. It sounds like it's a wonderful bonding experience as a family too. Listen, they have their feelings about it, and they will be in therapy, and that's fine. Do they tell you, 'Mom, that joke's not funny?' Do they have opinions? Of course they have opinions. They're American kids. They have opinions, but they'll never tell me, 'Mom, take it down.' They'll give me their perspective. They'll be like, 'You know what? Maybe if you came from this angle, you could consider our perspective.' I try a lot of jokes with them and their friends. I don't need to go to an open mic. I have an open mic in my living room every day. Every day, their whole posse is in my house. The soccer team is in my house, the football people are in my house. Whenever there's three, four people, it's an open mic for me. They'll offer me their opinion, and they'll be like, 'Oh, my mom said this, and I felt this way when she said it.' That helps me shape the joke and make it a full 360-degree piece. You talked about immigration being a really important theme in this special. Looking ahead, are there some other themes you see emerging in your comedy? Yes, I feel like I touched on this in the latest one—and now, I'm kind of working more in it—is how moms compete with each other. Competitive mothering. We all have so much latent energy, and we have so many latent desires that we have to suppress when you're being a mother. You can't do this because you've got the kid. You can't do that. I feel like it all bubbles out and surfaces in the mom competitions. All this energy that we would've probably put in our work environments or in other situations starts cropping up in the bake sale and the library books and whatever. I'm digging around that space right now. For women who are looking at returning to work or a career change after their kids are more grown, it might feel a little scary. Do you have any advice for them? Yes, be scared. You should be scared, but you're scared for the wrong reason. Don't be scared of what other people are going to think of you. Nobody cares. They don't matter. Be scared of not owning your future. The thing that motivates me the most is that I'm absolutely terrified of getting old in America and not having the means to take care of myself, not having the social structure to take care of myself. You should be scared of that, and you should say to yourself, I'm scared of it, and I'm going to fix it myself. I don't need anybody else to step in. I don't need a husband, I don't need a father, I don't need any of that. There are tools. Today, in the world of social media, women have more access to business opportunities than ever before. Use it all. I have friends who started a closet-organizing business and are making seven figures because they're constantly posting on social media about closet organizing, which I didn't even know was a thing five years ago. So be scared, but use that fear and anxiety to a productive purpose. Rather than shrinking or limiting you, use it to empower yourself and push you and propel you. All that fire that you have, use it to lift off the rocket ship that could be your career. When people watch this special, what's one thing you hope they take away from it? I hope that they all feel like they're part of my world. I wrote it with a lot of love. When I do live shows, I tell people, 'This is a friends and family event.' I'm the most regular, flawed, everyday mom human being, and I want them to feel like they're part of my family, and that they have family with each other. We made a family comedy because we want people to experience it with each other. The amount of people who are planning watch parties over this special, you could break the internet. People want to watch it with their husbands and wives and in-laws. Do you know how many mother-in-laws, daughter-in-laws come to my show? They bond. You would think that they hate each other, but actually they bond over the jokes. So if people can take one thing away from my special, it's the feeling of togetherness and belonging with each other and with me. Last question: Because you do so much traveling, any tips? Oh my God, yes. Know that things will go wrong. Everybody I know gets angry because they're all trying to speed through things. Me, personally, I go in prepared that everything is going to run on delay. My bag is going to get lost, and I'm ready for it. I always have a little carry-on with my emergency backup outfit. Do not book things so close that if you don't make this flight, and if this doesn't show.… Stop it. Travel is going to have problems. There are human beings running these airplanes and airports, and you have to give them that little allowance that things can go wrong. My bags are late, I don't care. I'm listening to my Bollywood music. Actually, today, I landed at 1:25 a.m. The bags were running late, and I was just dancing with the bag guy. I'm like, Let's make a Bollywood moment out of it. My tip is to slow down. It's not to get angry with everybody. We need to, as a nation, just stop being so angry about everything. It's not helping. Who are we helping? You're not even helping yourself. You are about to have a heart attack because your blood pressure is so high. It's true. I feel like most people know this, but then don't do it—that when things are hard, you've got to laugh through it. It's the only way to survive. It's the only way to survive, and it's okay. People are people. They're trying to help. I fly every day. Yelling at the steward on the airplane is not going to get it done. What can that guy do? They didn't load the meal. Sometimes, I'm in row two, and they've run out of meals. You've got to laugh at it because I'm like, Oh my God, what are you going to do with row 30? Are you going to make them cook? Can you imagine going through 50 rows of telling people, 'We ran out of food'? I think everybody needs to take a moment, take a step back, and relax. The thing that saves me is my wired headphones and my music. Anything upsets me, I start playing my music. I zone out. Let it take the time it's taking. Assume it's going to go badly. That way, when it goes right, you're elated. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Originally Appeared on Glamour Solve the daily Crossword
CBC
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Zarna Garg treats comedy as a business, not an art form
Social Sharing As a comedian, Zarna Garg thinks of herself as more of an entrepreneur than an artist. After spending 16 years as a stay-at-home mom, Garg felt the need to reinvent herself. She tried a few different ventures (such as a vegan chilli business and a matchmaking service), but none of them stuck. That all changed when her kids encouraged her to try stand-up comedy. "People were like, 'Why are you doing a comedy business at all? There's no money in comedy,'" Garg says in an interview with Q 's Tom Power. "And I realized there's no money in comedy the way American people do it. They set it up like an art form. We do it like a business — the Indians. I put my practical hat on. I was like, 'People want to laugh. I want to trash my mother-in-law. Let's go.'" WATCH | Official trailer for Practical People Win: Now, Garg has released a new stand-up special, Practical People Win, which highlights her unlikely journey into comedy and her business-oriented approach to life. "I came into comedy at 44," she says. "I came in with a life full of responsibilities and obligations. And I have no desire to be viewed as an artist." While Garg describes herself as a practical person, she's also taken some big risks in her life. In her new memoir, This American Woman, she writes about leaving home at 14 following her mother's death to avoid an arranged marriage, which came as an ultimatum from her father. "You have to be serious and build your own life," she tells Power. "I am a very vocal, outspoken supporter of women, in particular, using the M word — money. Because somehow, women and money together have been considered vulgar or crass, as if we don't need money to live…. I learned very early in life that you have to be serious, you have to deliver value to people if you want to build something real. And luckily, I learned how to monetize my trauma." When it's suggested that her comedy must be fulfilling to her on a spiritual level, Garg bristles. "No brown person is trying to fulfill their soul, people, we're just trying to fulfill our stomachs," she quips. "Nourishing my soul wouldn't even occur to me." But after years of feeling directionless and financially insecure, Garg is sincerely grateful to have found a successful path that works for her. "I take a moment now to thank God that I found something," she says. "Also, the reality is that I am the main breadwinner in my family now. My husband lost his job three, four years ago. He is still trying to recover. So, even just from a financial point of view, I'm very grateful that I found something that can pay my bills. And for a woman who was a stay-at-home mom for as long as I was, I didn't think I would ever get here."
Hindustan Times
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Review: This American Woman by Zarna Garg
When I first heard about comedian Zarna Garg — she was born in a rich family with servants, drivers, cooks, nice cars and air conditioning — being homeless on the streets of India, I was perplexed. I wondered what circumstances could cause a person born in a family that lived very well indeed end up in such dire straits. But we'll come to that soon enough. This American Woman opens with Garg sharing her experience of being the opening stand-up act for Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. She is ecstatic. It was at this moment that she knew she had arrived. She takes us back to her younger days when her father, TJ Mehta, a rich Gujarati businessman, was insisting that she get married early. Having lost her mother to an illness, Zarna rebels and decides to leave home. She ends up broke and hopping from one relative's house to another as she had no fixed place to stay. 'I couldn't get rid of a new un-rich smell that had completely enveloped me, no matter how much I scrubbed myself and my clothes. I could hear other people whisper about it,' Garg writes. Personal hygiene does go for a toss when you are fighting for your survival. She wasn't just homeless in a way we would expect a rebellious child of a rich baron to be homeless — living in a somewhat humble yet cozy apartment instead of a mansion — but 'shitting behind a car with dingoes sleeping under it' homeless. Garg had become a traitor, 'the golden child who turned against his creator' and she was facing the consequences. On a poignant note, she writes, 'Running from guaranteed security in a developing country is like pulling the plug on your own life support just to see what happens'. Garg had done exactly that. 'Even those close to me didn't understand why I fought so hard, because they all fell in line and were largely happy,' she observes. 'All these people with big degrees will sign away their whole life of freedom for an ounce of security,' Garg's father had said when she was a child, rather ironically. I couldn't help but see a bit of myself in Garg. As a rebellious kid who once refused to 'fall in line', I too paid a heavy price until, again much like the author, I decided to go back. My first meal at home made me cry happy tears. 'I slept like I was drugged by a serial killer,' Garg says. The feeling of sleeping on a comfortable bed after months of lying on back-breaking, pain-inducing mattresses will make any rebel 'soft' and compromise on their ideals. 'I will marry Hitler for this,' says Garg as she stuffs her face with gajar halwa and gobhi parathas. She gives in to her father's demand but just before her wedding day — in what can be best described as divine intervention — she receives her student visa from the US Embassy. She spends the next few years in Detroit, trying to get a degree and a job. As someone who struggled, Garg does talk about money in her memoir, but not in the way the average finance influencer does. She isn't here to give wealth management lessons. She talks about the privilege of having enough money to have one's basic needs met. It wasn't until she was a paid stand-up comic that she realized she had been living in survival mode for 30 years, waiting for the next disaster to strike. She wanted to taste American freedom, but it didn't come easy. She was so consumed with food, clothing and shelter that she didn't get a chance to live. She married her husband Shalabh, whom she met via a matchmaking service, shortly after she arrived in Detroit. They moved to Zurich, had kids and Garg decided to pursue her dream of being a stand-up comic. The memoir reverberates with the pain of losing one's home and the guilt that comes with prioritizing oneself and rebelling against parental authority. The memoir is also very funny. I burst out laughing when Garg described her experience of visiting a parlour for her bridal session. She describes it as essentially two women in hazmat suits swabbing her with 'a homemade brew of drain cleaner and industrial fertilizer'. In possibly the most unhinged lines from the memoir, Garg says: '...go ahead and bleach that ass****! So what if I'm on fire! More! How white can we get it? Make my ass**** look like the ass**** of an American ghost!' Another crazy moment has her mother-in-law's mother lining up the family's daughters-in-law according to their beauty. 'You're not the ugliest. You are the second ugliest,' the woman tells Zarna as everyone cheers. Garg isn't an ABCD (American Born Indian Desi) but an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) so her observations on the peculiarities of Indian culture are quite tongue-in-cheek. Her humour is similar in its themes to that of Aziz Ansari, Russell Peters and other Indian stand-up comics but stands out for being irreverent, occasionally bashful and (sometimes) foul-mouthed. Before opening for Poehler and Fey, she wonders: 'India is incense and chanting for them. Were they ready for a foul-mouthed real-life Indian auntie who hated meditation?' She then decides to give them what they want and meditates on stage. Garg and Shalabh embody the NRI couple who have embraced the parts of their culture that they most identify with. This memoir reads like a film made by Gurinder Chaddha in collaboration with Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta. It is poignant, somewhat provocative, insightful, and as one would expect from a stand-up comic, full of pithy observations and rib-tickling humour. It is also an ode to believing in yourself when no one else does. The final pages feature an image of Zarna at her first stand-up special. It's captioned: 'If you don't look up, you may never know there's a big glittery sign with your name on it.' Deepansh Duggal writes on art and culture. Twitter: @Deepansh75.
The Hindu
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
In conversation with comedian Zarna Garg on her new book ‘This American Woman'
I'm now so American, I not only have opinions, I monetise them!' proclaims comedian Zarna Garg on a recent episode of the talk show, Late Night with Seth Meyers. Garg's unique brand of observational comedy about Indian immigrant life in the U.S. has been setting social media ablaze. From dishing out hilarious Indian mother-in-law jokes to delivering parenting hot takes, donned in her statement functional outfit comprising a kurta paired with a belt and matching salwar, Garg, 50, never misses a beat. 'When I'm on stage, people call me the machine gun of jokes,' she tells me over a Zoom call. It is close to midnight in the U.S. but Garg is firing away, about her Hollywood debut last year, her upcoming shows, and most notably, her recent memoir, This American Woman (published by Penguin Random House). Comedian Zarna Garg on her new book, 'This American Woman: A One-In-A-Billion Memoir' The title, she says, is both a nod to a running joke in her family, where she was often labelled 'American' for speaking her mind, as well as a bid to be relatable to an international audience. Also, she quips, 'I don't really connect with the titles that a lot of Indian authors write,' adding that there is no beloved mango tree or courtyard from her childhood she could have referred to in the title. 'I never saw a guava tree [growing up]. I have no idea if guavas grow on a tree.' Dating tips and marriage The book mirrors Garg's personality; it is an easy read packed with anecdotes from the author's life and is narrated in a conversational tone. Garg says she meant for the book 'to feel like you're having a conversation with a friend'. Each chapter takes up a part of Garg's journey — from growing up in an affluent household in India to leaving home at 14 when faced with the prospect of marriage after her mother's untimely death, to moving to the U.S. at 17 to start life afresh. After getting married and being a stay-at-home mother of three, Garg strikes gold as a standup comic at the age of 44. 'Every chapter had to have a full story arc. The way this book is written, any one chapter could be a TV show, could be a movie itself,' says Garg, who also hosts a family-run podcast, where she is joined by her husband and three children as they discuss everything from health to god to fame and its pitfalls. There is a portion of the memoir that has gone viral where Garg shares how she posted an ad online (when the Internet was just beginning to rule our lives) to find a life partner. And how her request to potential suitors to include 'their most recent tax returns and medical records', caught the eye of her now husband of 27 years, Shalabh. Ask her what advice she would give single people in the age of dating apps, and Garg is quick to say that they should have a list of three core beliefs and no more. In her own case, Garg adds, 'If things don't work out with my husband… I'm going to be looking for a billionaire with a heart disease.' Is India stuck in the past? On the work front, Garg's second comedy special, Practical People Win, will be out on Hulu and JioHotstar in July. Her first, One in a Billion, is available on Amazon Prime and has rave reviews, although a section of viewers complains that her comedy dissects an India 'that has moved on'. Garg begs to differ. 'I think the modern Indians have moved on. But India is a much bigger country than the 5-10% of urban India.' She adds, 'In my estimation, no country has changed that much. It's not just India, even America, if anything, might have even regressed a little bit in the last few years.' Last year, she played the role of the mother in an Indian immigrant family in director Roshan Sethi's romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy, which premiered at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. The film drew appreciation for its leads' heartfelt performances, with reviews calling Garg 'a delight'. Up next is a sitcom based on her life, produced by Mindy Kaling and Kevin Hart. But Garg, who says she grew up on a steady literary diet of Enid Blyton, Jeffrey Archer and Sidney Sheldon, is also in the process of putting together her second book — a motivational title with a mom twist, 'because a lot of motivation books in the bookstores are very businessy… And I feel like moms do so much motivating all day'. There's no arguing with that logic, whether in India or the U.S. The writer is a Delhi-based literary critic and research scholar.
