All About Zarna Garg – The Standup Comedian

She Would Make You Laugh

Zarna Garg is a stand-up comedian, award winning screenwriter and also a former lawyer. On top of that she also performs as a motivational speaker and keynote speaker too. One can easily get the news on Zarna Garg thatshe is a rage on TikTok with over 370k followers and 75 million views for her comedies.

It is astonishing that Zarna attracted more than 60 million views within the first year of her presence on TikTok platform. Her comedy has also generated huge popularity on Instagram.

If one were to ask what is the profession of Zarna Garg, stand-up comedian would be the most apt answer. She has multiple sold-out comedy shows to her name. While exploring about Zarna Garg one can come to know that has had the distinction of being the winner of Kevin Hart’s Lyft Comics comedy competition on Peacock and the 2021 Ladies of Laughter Newcomer Award.

From Law to Comedy

Anyone writing a biography of Zarna Garg must mention that she was born in Mumbai and was raised in a traditional Gujarati family. Her father tried to get her married when she was a teenager but she rebelled and left home rather than being bullied into matrimony. She eventually managed to immigrate to the US at the age of 16, where she joined her sister and sister’s family.

She went to college and law school in the US and eventually became a lawyer. She earned a Bachelors in Finance from the University of Akron and from Case Western Reserve School of Law she earned her JD.

It is amazing that this super successful stand-up comedian didn’t enter the comedy scene before she was in her 40s. She was a litigation attorney in Manhattan before being a mother. She left her legal career after the birth of her first child.

Though she considered re-entering legal arena after her kids were in school, the stay-at-home mom for 15 years found that she had lost interest in law as a career option. Her daughter urged her to try stand-up comedy by exploring her inherent humorous side. “I couldn’t think of a smart, romantic comedy written by an Indian woman and thought I may be able to fill that space,” she explained to SEEMA two years back.

Rearranged Hit

She entered the serious world of comedy as a screenwriter. Her debut romantic comedy screenplay titled ‘Rearranged’ won the Best Comedy Screenplay Award at the 2019 Austin Film Festival, where nearly 11,000 scripts were in the competition. The screenplay also became 2019 Academy Nicholl Fellowships Semi-Finalist. The screenplay has been optioned in March 2020 by Marginal Mediaworks.

After getting acquainted with her talent in writing comedy, Zarna tested her jokes on live audiences to see how they react. In her early days as a stand-up comedian, she took jokes from her hit screenplay and did weave them into her act.  She began with open mics but soon evolved to producing her own shows.

Success Stands Up

It would not be an overstatement to say that Zarna is among the miniscule number of female Indian comedians across the globe. Many of her jokes are aimed to present the South Asian immigrant experience and it seems that this is her niche. She also displayed the courage to publicly take on her mother-in-law.

She began with shows targeting an Indian audience at parks and subways but soon became an online sensation during the pandemic.   

According to her website, she performs for sold out audiences at top clubs across the US. ‘Sari, Not Sorry’ is one of her celebrated shows. ‘Sari, Not Sorry’ was featured in Broadway and several other venues and platforms. ‘My American Dream’ is her debut show at Caroline’s on Broadway.

Since the pandemic, she introduced her comedy shows online, a move which was covered in the New York Times, and also in outdoor venues including Central Park and the MET.

Here it also deserves a mention that Zarna was the featured performer for the Outstanding Mother Awards in support of the Save the Children foundation with attendees including Halle Berry, Kate Hudson, Kris Jenner among others.

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