Indian immigrant and mother of three Zarna Garg broke through as an aspiring stand-up comedian thanks to one of her kids posting clips of her early bits to social media. Cut to 2025, where she has more than a million followers each on TikTok and Instagram, a network sitcom deal, a newly published memoir, and now a Hulu debut to go along with her first stand-up special One In A Billion, which came out two years ago on Amazon Prime. No wonder she and the whole family wants to dance it up onstage together!
The Gist: For those of you who missed her 2023 Prime Video special, One In A Billion, Garg also used that as the subtitle to her memoir that came out this April, This American Woman. She also has been on the road opening for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, which she name-drops at one point in this hour.
She made her acting debut this year in the film, A Nice Indian Boy, and has Kevin Hart and Mindy Kaling backing her development deal with CBS for a sitcom based on her life, which found her escaping an arranged marriage in India to come to the United States, where she got married again and was a stay-at-home mother for 16 years before trying her hand at stand-up. Her jokes target her husband, daughter, two sons, and her mother-in-law.
What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Garg still occupies a lane heading in a parallel yet opposite lane from many stand-ups who joke about their immigrant moms, for she is the immigrant mom. By tapping into her heritage and appealing to a broad audience, she’s actually kind of hitting a similar note (albeit geographically, politically and generationally different) as Yakov Smirnoff did in the 1980s. What a country, indeed!
Memorable Jokes: She leans into her inability to live up to stereotypes from the jump, ironically boasting that she’s only onstage telling jokes because “I’m the world’s only Indian who failed math.” And while she claims the family motel went bankrupt; “but my Instagram account is killing!” To the tune of 1.4 million followers as of now, in fact.
She mocks her own bindi, claiming it’s the same sticker Macy’s uses for its sales markdowns.
But she reserves most of her time targeting her immediate family. First and foremost, her mother-in-law, who still lives in India but comes to stay in America for long periods at a time, and even though Garg has been married for 25 years, her mother-in-law still hasn’t made peace with it?
Garg also definitely has a favorite child of her trio, and it’s neither her oldest daughter at Stanford (whom she calls “a dramatic, overthinking mess” who is dating a white boy) nor her youngest 11-year-old son (whom she quips can settle for becoming an optometrist since he’s the baby). Everything revolves around Garg’s “handsome” 17-year-old son, whose only problem in her eyes is that he knows he’s good looking and therefore gets away with too much.
She does go outside her own home on occasion for premises involving her friend and fellow mom, Seema; in one more memorable instance, she cracks that Seema may have bigger worries than her own son quitting a high-paying bank job to join a Broadway show.
For all of the Indian immigrants of any age, Garg also jokes that she has written a book to read: “It’s Never Too Late To Go To Medical School.” She may not actually have that book in her arsenal, but that’s also not about to stop her from offering her own style of meditation classes, where her affirmations include: “You are not a loser. You are just not a winner, and that is OK.”
Our Take: Garg isn’t much for political comedy, although she comes close when she makes fun of Indian men for not actually reading the Kama Sutra by comparing them to Americans not knowing what’s in the U.S. Constitution.
There’s perhaps more there for the digging. Same, too, goes for her premise wondering if she’s stuck within a generation where she still must respect her elders while not being able to be honest with her own children lest she trigger their anxiety.
But she likely knows this. As she says earlier in the hour, the idea that there’s no money in comedy only holds true for American comedians who think of stand-up as an art form and not as a business. That’s not Garg. Her business model? “You want to laugh. I want to trash my mother-in-law.” And she’s laughing all the way to the bank these days.
Even if that means harping on the need for Indian immigrants to become the right kinds of doctors, which she brings up multiple times in her crowd work, or if it means sticking with a strong Indian accent. “I don’t see the point in dropping the accent now.” She may joke that as a parent, she must remind her children not to “follow your bliss.” But for her own part, she’s doing just that, and bringing the whole family onstage with her for a choreographed dance family (complete with behind-the-scenes dance practice footage that plays over the end credits).
Our Call: This is comedy for a very specific audience, and if you’re among those wanting a wacky Aunty to make fun of families like yours, then you don’t need me to tell you to STREAM IT. But if that’s not you, then you might as well SKIP IT.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.
