Aparna Nancherla ’05E “is unassuming, soft-spoken, reflective. Character traits that might not make it easy for one to rise in the testosterone-charged comedy world,” wrote the Washington Post in a recent profile of the comedian.
“But perhaps because of that, she caught audiences by surprise, offering up observations she’d been filing away throughout her lifetime of quietude,” the Post wrote, describing her success despite, or because of, her shyness:
“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 humor, always, but persistence.”
“Fame is so weird. Any small inkling that I’ve gotten, I’m like, this is a nightmare,” Nancherla told Vulture in another profile.