MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Every week, a guest draws a card from NPR's Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Comedian Aparna Nancherla has long lived with anxiety. That's something she shares with many other comics.
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APARNA NANCHERLA: I do think maybe there is just facets of especially, like, a depressive brain, a neurotic brain, that just translates very well to stand-up. Because stand-up as an art form is essentially just picking apart, like, why do we do the things we do? It's kind of two pats off the same impulse.
KELLY: Nancherla digs into these issues in the upcoming documentary, "Anxiety Club." Ahead of its release, she spoke to Wild Card host Rachel Martin.
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RACHEL MARTIN: What's the most religious thing about you?
NANCHERLA: Oh. I will say, I don't think I have an official OCD diagnosis, but I am someone who really gets stuck in rituals, where I'm like, OK, if you make little schedules and to-do lists and you do things in a certain order every day, that'll kind of keep you moving forward. But then I...
MARTIN: And that feels religious to you?
NANCHERLA: Yeah. Religion, to me, feels kind of, like, ritual and...
MARTIN: Yeah.
NANCHERLA: But it's weird because I also have an impulse of, like, as soon as someone - including me, I guess - imposes structure on myself, I'm immediately enraged that someone's trying to make me do something.
MARTIN: (Laughter) I'm going to say a thing that you're going to be annoyed at. But you don't seem to be, like, a person who outwardly rages.
NANCHERLA: Right.
MARTIN: Tell me I'm wrong. And how does your rage come to be in the world?
NANCHERLA: I didn't rage a lot when I was younger, but I will say, as I've gotten older - I don't know if it's, you know, perimenopause or what - but the rage levels have been way higher in just a way that's harder to tamp down or compartmentalize. And yeah, I've started, like, screaming in my car. And I scare myself sometimes...
MARTIN: Road rage.
NANCHERLA: ...'Cause I'm like, what did that sound come out of? It's not even road rage.
MARTIN: Oh, no.
NANCHERLA: I'll just be - it's not even at another (laughter) person.
MARTIN: Oh, driving is incidental to the rage.
NANCHERLA: Yeah, I'll just be mad. And I'm like, this is the only space in which I...
MARTIN: Yeah.
NANCHERLA: ...Feel like I can safely do this.
MARTIN: But what are you so mad - what are you mad about?
NANCHERLA: Some of it I don't know. I almost feel like, is this a stage of life where, like, you know, your hormones fluctuate, and, like, everything you've been mad about just surfaces finally because you never expressed it fully earlier? It's just, like, decades of grievances...
MARTIN: Yeah.
NANCHERLA: ... Are coming out. 'Cause sometimes it does feel like I'm an oracle, and I'm channeling some sort of ancestral, you know, outrage (laughter).
MARTIN: I mean, then you need to let that stuff out. You do.
NANCHERLA: (Laughter) I know.
MARTIN: Maybe it's perimenopause. I mean, I blame so many things on perimenopause.
NANCHERLA: (Laughter).
MARTIN: But even if it is...
NANCHERLA: I know.
MARTIN: ...Who cares? You got to let that stuff out.
NANCHERLA: I do too.
MARTIN: You got to let that stuff out.
NANCHERLA: I know. I know. And I grew up, I think, like a lot of people, like, just very uncomfortable around expressing anger, around seeing other people express anger. And so it's almost like a new journey for me to own mine, but also, like, let it have some breathing room.
KELLY: You can watch that full conversation with Aparna Nancherla by following Wild Card with Rachel Martin on YouTube. And "Anxiety Club," it is streaming on the platform Jolt starting August 15.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAZZY STAR SONG, "FADE INTO YOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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