You don't expect introverts and shy people to do stand-up comedy because obviously it involves a lot of public speaking and having conversations with your audience. But Aparna Nancherla, an American comedian and actress, is an exception.

She not only regularly gets up in front of crowds to try to make them laugh, but she also gets pretty personal about her own depression and anxiety. Her universal appeal hits the experience of living with anxiety and depression on the nose. She invites her audience to see lightness in their struggles without downplaying the pain of mental-health disorders. Nancherla has been doing stand-up for more than a decade, but says she really only started sharing stories about her mental health in the past couple of years.

Nancherla says, "It actually came out of being in a depressive rut and not being able to really talk and write about anything else. So, I sort of wrote it down and then did it onstage because I hadn't written anything else lately, and I think it resonated with people in a way that I wasn't expecting. I also thought that the mental health market had been already broken open by a lot of comedians, so I was like, I don't know if I have anything to add. But then it spoke to people in a way that was surprising so I kept digging in that direction.”

That direction was a pretty natural lead-in to her latest acting gig — playing a dispirited Human Resources representative named Grace on the darkly funny Comedy Central series, 'Corporate'."

She describes herself as “a comedian and general silly billy. Her sense of humor is dry, existential, and absurd, with notes of uncalled-for whimsy. Think a wine you didn’t order.” Nancherla is weird, she’s hilarious, and she’s on the rise.  

This year, Nancherla is going to be a regular on the Comedy Central series Corporate, appear in the upcoming Paul Feig mystery thriller, A Simple Favor, and get her own half-hour Netflix special in series two of The Standups. Her recent stature on countless “funniest people” lists is well-deserved, not just because of her jokes, but because unlike so many public figures, she’s shamelessly empowered by her weaknesses.

Performing comedy and acting on TV has put to use Nancherla’s ability to create her own worlds and then share them with others — a result of having an introverted personality and constantly managing the ebbs and flows of anxiety and depression. She approaches her roles with the understanding that all individuals, at some point, feel like outsiders.

“I often have seen the world that way, as an introvert or someone who was pretty sheltered as a kid, as always kind of being on the outside looking in,” she says. “Even when characters are outsiders or misunderstood, there is some vein that you can access of how they fit into the rest of the world or how they might think they have something unique to add to it. That’s where I start with most characters.”

As Nancherla focuses on branching out into suspense and building on her comedy, she’s trying to pull some focus away from harmful distractions. Since daily news updates often contribute to her feelings of anxiety, she has been putting more effort into staying off platforms like Twitter. While her jokes and a growing number of political statements still fill her feed, Nancherla wants to avoid the trap of scrolling aimlessly to save her mental health — and maybe talk more to people out loud.