I remember the first time I met Zarna Garg.
It was at a picnic for New York City comics in 2021, back when she carried around her signature rolling pin. Garg’s star was already on the rise — I recognized her from social media but didn’t know her personally, let alone expect to see her out and about with rising local talent. She spoke to me with the kind of respect and attentiveness that comes from years of media training (and, in her case, decades of motherhood); she followed everyone she met that day on social media, and had tagged me in a photo before I even made it home.
I’ve told that story a lot as Garg’s career exploded over the past few years — not to name-drop (though my mother is impressed), but to demonstrate that social media’s favorite aunty is exactly who she seems, and also a genuine advocate for other creatives. She’s also one of the hardest-working people in entertainment if not the world at large; in 2025 alone she has published a book, filmed a sitcom pilot, premiered a movie, and now debuts her second taped special on Hulu.
“My brain doesn’t stop,” Garg told me over Zoom. “I see anybody and I’m like, ‘Let’s make a video, let’s capture this.’ I have to remind myself not to attack people with it. I have to slow myself down because I overwhelm people easily.”
In the book, “This American Woman,” Garg tells of an astrologer who once told her mother: “This girl will talk and talk and talk.” Part of that is performing, being what she describes as the face of a family business, but part of it is the hustle and grind behind the scenes.
“I am in a privileged position today, but I have no apology for it, and I’ll tell you why: because I built it all with my bare hands,” she said. “Nobody was there. I know how to write the entire script. I know how to shoot it. I know how to edit it. I know how to distribute it on nine platforms. I know how to make it go viral. Every single step of this is a step that I have lived and perfected on my way before I hired other people to do it. So yeah, I’m very privileged right now, but take it all away and I’ll start over, and I’ll win again.”
The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
IndieWire: I told my editors that you’re not so much in Hollywood yet, but also one of the most famous people on the planet. What has it been like experiencing that kind of recognition through stand up and social media, which for a lot of people doesn’t happen before they step onto a screen, or at least it didn’t used to?
The thing that I like best about being recognized is like you said, they don’t know me from a big screen, so it’s not like seeing Priyanka Chopra. If I see Priyanka Chopra, I’m like, wow, because she’s this big Bollywood and Hollywood star now, right? People see me and they just start smiling. They don’t even know why they’re smiling, because they see me mixed up with their families in their phones, their uncles, their aunties, their neighbors, their whatever. It’s a lot of like, “Oh, I know her! I know her. How do I know her?”
But the thing that makes me most proud is that when people see me, it’s an involuntary reaction that they haven’t even thought about, and they start smiling. My association with humor and good feelings is so strong that it’s never any other reaction — even the people who don’t like my work actually just start smiling because they can’t help it. They immediately think of whatever last video of mine made them smile, or that they send in their family chats.
That’s part of it; you have such a family appeal, and you’ve been so good about involving your family since the beginning. Was there ever any question of how much or how little to include them, especially with the kids?
No. I always say that we run a family business — I’m the face of it. It’s not like I’m involving them. They’ve been involved since day one. I wouldn’t be doing any of this without them. It was my daughter’s vision that I should try stand up comedy. My son put me on social media. Even now, just this past weekend I was at a Belly Laughs Comedy Festival where [Zoya] was with me capturing footage everywhere we went. So I do things like moms do things. My kids go with me a lot of places, and we are building this whole world of family comedy together.
Was there a point where it was moving too fast? When you’ve blown up exponentially, there had to be early on, or even still, like there’s just so much going on to balance.
I feel like I should be humble and say yes, but it’s actually not true. I think my brain has this broken OCD component where if I want something, I chase it like a mad person, and I can’t stop. Even if I want to make it stop, I can’t. When I had a book coming out, I asked my publisher, “What is it that you want?” And she said, “It would be great if we could make New York Times bestseller.” And then that became my singular vision, and I was like, until we get it, we’re not gonna stop. Once I decided that I’m doing the stand up comedy, it was “How are we gonna do this? What are the top players doing? How do they get it done?” It kind of just went like a machine was built to make it happen, and now we’re doing the same thing with TV projects, with movies.
My movie, when it came out — I’m just an actor on it, I didn’t have to do anything, but I would not have rested until the movie was a big success. Because my producer’s success is my success. I don’t sit there and think, “Is this my job? Am I getting paid?” It’s not how my brain works at all. So once I started doing this, I also built a world where I’m collaborating with a lot of people who are giving me their goodwill; the clubs that hire me, the streaming services that give me their platform. Right now, I’m fully obsessed with how I’m going to make Hulu succeed like a wild, crazy person, not because they’re asking me for anything. They’re actually extremely gentle and generous, like “Do what makes you happy.” It’s also a lot of American people, white people, so they are very gentle in their chit chat. If it was an Indian place, they would have been like, “What are you doing?!”
If you end up working in Indian film, we’ll have that conversation then, a real spicy one.
You know what I’m talking about. But just because they are not beating me down for it doesn’t mean it’s not top of my mind, is what I’m saying. Coming back to your question, the speed and velocity is orchestrated. It’s not just happening. None of these things just happen. We are out there grinding, five Gargs and our whole team of another ten people, is out there grinding and hustling constantly, everywhere we go, saying, “Watch this. Watch this. Watch this.” It’s not just a victory for me if I win, it’s a victory for all the people who chose to support me, who chose to look at this complicated and quirky situation, and said, “Yes, let’s give her a platform.”
Let’s start with the film, because you did film that earlier. It was your first time acting. What was that experience like?
It was A+. My director could not be better, my producers could not be nicer. My costars were all amazing, and that’s why I think I’m probably never going to do it again, because you can’t top that. The experience was so good that I’m nervous to sign anything else where the experience is not going to be that good. They were so nice to me. We made that movie with so much love, there’s really a lot of love behind the scenes, which is why the movie kind of popped and glowed the way it did. It’s so real. So it was really, really amazing. Especially my director and my co star, Karan [Soni], outstanding. They knew I didn’t know anything, I was coming from shows, going to shows, so they were very understanding of the fact that I was new at this, and really helped me take every baby step that I needed to to get there.
That’s kind of a refreshing answer, because the path that is usually made for comics is, you start doing stand up, you go on shows, you produce shows, and then you audition and you do more acting. That’s just the career path forward, but in your case it doesn’t have to be.
The good thing about not being anybody’s top choice for anything is that you don’t even worry about auditioning and all that. Not one door would have opened for me if I would have sat around auditioning, like no way. Who’s casting an Indian middle-aged woman in a kurta and a bindi and an accent? I knew from day one I’m gonna do my own thing, and I say it even now. My comedy shows — not a single club was open to me as a comic. No one was booking me. I just started doing shows for free, outside, in the subway, under a tree. I was like, “I will build my own following. This is not going to work for me. The process is not set up for me.” I started working on an exceptional second hour before I had a deal with anybody. I knew that if I create an exceptional second hour, I will find the audience for it if no one wants to collaborate with me. Hulu stepped in and stepped in in a big way, and I’m honored about that, but I didn’t think I would make their cut. I honestly didn’t think — in fact, I told my agents, “Forget it. They’re not going to want me. They all want young girls.” We know what’s what. They all want the young women who look pretty and all that, and that’s fine, it’s their business. And my agents were like, “No, I really think there’s something here, and they are watching you. Give it a minute.” But I don’t slow down. The saying in this in the Garg world is the Z train stops for nothing and nobody. If I want to do a TV show, I will just create my own little, very makeshift version and start releasing. Basically, what my channel is is like a sitcom. People watch hours and hours of our videos as if they’re watching a TV show.
Also, you did do a TV show in the middle of all this other stuff!
Yeah. Even the movie, I told Karan and Roshan [Sethi], my director and our lead star, I said, “We cannot wait. We cannot wait for people to be like, ‘Oh, watch this movie,’ we gotta go out there.” Roshan is a cancer doctor. So I told him, “Roshan, you gotta treat the sales and the noise around this movie like you’re saving you’re a baby who’s about to die. You gotta fight that hard.” Ask him, he’ll tell you. Every day I was texting, “Get in there and respond to comments. What are you doing sitting at home and just saving lives? Save lives on the side.”
Tell me about the writing this book and what that process was. You had that bestseller goal set and you signed so many copies.
Oh my god, my hands are gonna fall off. I don’t really know why they want signed copies, because I don’t get it, but that is a thing that people want. The book is my life story. It’s a very informal tone. I didn’t think I could write the way — I wanted to write an entertaining book. First and foremost, the book has to entertain. It is not a chronological dump of all my trauma. That’s not fun nor interesting for anybody, and not even for me. So we wrote the whole thing like an arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Twenty-one chapters have been written the same way because we want people to feel strong emotions. The number one thing I’m getting back feedback from the book, which has thousands of near-perfect reviews, is that people didn’t want it to end. They were feeling so sad when it ended, because it’s a fun journey. Even though it’s a real story, with the ups and downs and all of it, I wrote it to entertain people. That’s what I’m here to do.
It does get very personal, very vulnerable, and that’s not something that South Asians and Desi moms in particular are known for.
But again, it was like the decision was made to do all that when I decided to write the book. I said to my family, either I’m writing the book or I’m not writing the book. But I don’t want to write a book where I’m constantly afraid, what will my husband think? What will my brother think? Because then you’re not honest and connecting with the audience. The audience today is very smart. If you’re hiding things, if you’re lying about things, they know. And my audience is literally, if you could do an IQ test, I’m telling you, my audience is the smartest audience in the world. They’re all doctors, they’re all neurosurgeons. They’re like tech entrepreneurs, billionaires — you cannot fool them. So either you’re writing the book or you’re not writing. Not a single person in my family saw any copies of any pages before the book was finished, accepted, legally, accepted by the publisher. And then I said, here you can read it. You either trust me or you don’t.
Was there anything you were particularly hesitant or excited to include?
The New York City private school chapter — we had to go back and forth on that chapter a lot because we talk about a lot of decisions, but in the end my publisher, legal, we all decided that it’s a very good chapter, and it’s a doing a huge service to mothers in America who are feeling extremely burdened by this whole system, who are feeling alone, who are feeling crushed by it, and then we made the decision to go forward with it. But almost everything else was was very smooth sailing. In publishing world, they call my book the opposite of “The Spare,” of [Prince] Harry’s book, because his book is all about every grievance he ever had with his family, and my book is all about the love. It’s all about every family member that did right things by me. My brain doesn’t even remember what wrong things people do to me. I don’t have the brain space to hold all that.
You are open about living a privileged life at this moment, even not working while you went into stand up and hiring a writer. Once you discuss your past and where you’ve come from, of course it makes sense. It reminded me of “Angry Young Men,” when Javed Akhtar talks about coming from not much money. He says to this day, sometimes they’ll lay out a meal and I think this must not be for me.
You never fully come to terms with it, but I share it openly because so many comics behave like they’re writing every word and they’re not. We all know that. Why not give credit where it’s due? It’s not the end of the world to say we collaborated in an excellent way. All the late night shows, you think those guys are writing every joke that they say? Of course not, and it’s OK. I think it’s better to be honest and upfront with your audience and let them make the decision if it’s good or bad. I know that interview you’re talking about. It was very refreshing, because he was being honest.
We have to own what we’re good at, especially South Asian women. We’ve been told to minimize ourselves. Culturally, we’ve been told take the least amount of space, don’t brag. If you say anything good about yourself, God forbid you’re bragging. No! We have to talk about what we can do and not do. We are all running businesses here, so I offer no apologies. I get flamed for it all the time in the media. They all think my husband’s funding my life. It’s actually the opposite. He lost his job during COVID, has not fully recovered, and I’m running this whole house, and I’m proud of it.
The bragging was always framed as vanity for me growing up.
Anytime I’ve learned this, anytime they say it’s not our culture, what it is code for is that our men don’t like it. If you look at our culture, essentially everything they like is us sitting and suffering in silence and the men being glorified, and that needs to come to an end, like ASAP, right now.
Being too big or too loud, because it means you don’t need them for support.
Exactly, and guess what? We don’t. Look at this, Hulu coming in in such a big way, supporting us, putting an Indian Aunty in a pink kurta, all over billboards all over America. This is real support. Everything else is nonsense. But this is the real deal, what we’re getting over here.
You built this whole thing yourself, and then suddenly you were at a level of fame where probably a lot of people came calling. Are there people who didn’t or weren’t interested, or who did not buy stock in Zarna at the right time?
So many, so many. Where to begin? All the clubs in New York. The first club that passed me was Comedy Cellar. If I’m not on a late night show, it’s because [those clubs] rejected me. I’m not going to name them, but it’s because they rejected me. We are trying to be everywhere. We are trying to hit every audience. There are comics, brown comics, who don’t follow me. I follow them. I’m very generous in my praise of everybody. I offer my platform to everybody. When they do good work, I shout out everybody. But there’s so many of them who choose not to follow me. This is very easy to look up. Anybody can look it up. And they have their own ego and hassle. They act wounded that I exist on the scene.
Why do you think that is?
I don’t know. I’ve actually had an Indian comic tell me, “Aunty, shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?” This is an Indian male comic living in New York City, an educated guy. So then how can we hold Indian uncles accountable? If this dude who’s educated here can’t even think straight?
Do think he was trying to make a joke, but is just bad at comedy?
I mean, look, if this is the best you can come up with, you probably should go to med school and hope and pray there, my friend. This one didn’t work.
You’ve written and toured a book, you filmed and promoted a movie, you have multiple specials, you have your podcast — what’s your favorite?
This hour that I just filmed for Hulu really has my heart. I found my voice. I wasn’t nervous the way I was the first time, I had enough audience feedback to know exactly what they wanted from me. So we really packed — it’s 60 minutes of literally, joke, joke, joke — the density of the jokes is like distilled, pure gold comedy that I created for Hulu, because there was just so much love around this partnership that I wanted to give them the very best. And I wanted to give my audience the very best.
I can’t wait to see it! Lastly, do you have any advice for our readers from Aunty Z?
Yes: Do all your artistic things on Friday and Saturday night and stay in the STEM fields. Do not read this interview and think I should be a full-time comic. No, you should not. Even if you’re funny, you should not. I’m telling you right now, if I find doing that somewhere, I’m gonna beat you with my bare hands, and I’m not gonna worry about — I don’t really care that people don’t do that in America. If you’ve been to my show, you know it gets real in there.
You know, that’s about what I expected, but I’m happy to get it in writing. And I’m entering my Aunty era, I kind of endorse.
Yeah, do it on the weekends! I’m not saying kill your dreams. I’m saying limit them.
“Practical People Win” is now streaming on Hulu.
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