Abby Govindan is a US comedian and one of the youngest touring comics in the world. She was recently honoured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for her achievements in comedy.
Tell us about your comedy style:
Oooh I love this question! I always get compared to the same 2 or 3 Indian comedians which is cool and awesome and such an honour obviously BUTTTTT that also seems like the lowest common denominator. Like when I briefly worked at a pottery studio and kept getting mistaken for the only other Indian girl employee.
I draw a lot of inspiration from comedians who toy with the line between reality and comedy like Nathan Fielder, Eric André, and Diane Morgan. I like using comedy to tell a story and pull at heartstrings the way Richard Gadd and Mike Birbiglia are so good at doing. I’d like to think (by the look of endless racist and sexist Instagram comments) that I never quite play it safe with the new jokes that I write, and I have Ali Wong to thank for that. From that first special, she just came out guns blazing, unapologetically herself.
So much of my comedic sensibilities have been shaped by Ramy Youssef’s eponymous Hulu show. I will never forget the boatloads of discourse it created on Twitter, but here we are seven years later at a point in time when it is a consensus that the show is a work of genius and a much-needed expansion of mainstream Muslim representation.
My goal is to create bodies of work that outlive discourse, jokes that I feel proud co-signing and standing by that don’t become cringe or outdated within two TikTok trend cycles, things that people will look back on in two or three decades and think “wow, she really had something unique to say.”
How does it feel to be returning to the Fringe?
I’m sure I’m not the first to say this but Fringe is a cult. Like, we’re aware of that right? This is a world where you really have to buy in to the madness, and “the madness” has a £10,000 ticket price. I did a limited run last year and my producer was like “You have a 7pm 4-day show offer and a 1:45pm 4-day show offer.” And I was like “oh, easy! 7pm? right?” and then my producer and everyone under the sun insisted to me that the 1:45pm venue was better and made more sense for me. I was like… you people are insane. There is no way I’m selling well for a 1:45pm show on a Tuesday!
But I would come to learn that the venue (shout out Monkey Barrel) is storied around these parts and I did indeed sell extremely well! That kind of thing is just not anything that would make sense until you go to Edinburgh in the month of August and experience the high of selling 100 tickets to a mid-afternoon show on a work day for yourself. This place operates under a different set of rules to the rest of the known universe. That being said, I am happily a part of this cult so… let’s do it baby!
Who are the funny women you would recommend seeing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year?
Too many to count! Sophie Duker, Kemah Bob, Olga Koch, Elouise Eftos, Izzy Knowles, Wally Baram, Courtney Buchner, Amy Annette, just an insane and generational run of talented women coming to Edinburgh this year.
What’s next for you?
Let me know when you find out 🙂
Tickets and information for Abby Govindan: Pushing 30 can be found here!
