Abby Govindan Launched Jungle Cat Comedy to Fill a Hole in the NYC Comedy Scene

By the time I went to watch comedian Abby Govindan perform a stand-up set last month, I’d been seeing her tweets on my timeline for years—including an inadvertent interaction in 2021 with Logan Paul over whether lunch with him or $500,000 would be the fiscally smarter move, and other tweets, like her 2020 hit lauding Ghislaine Maxwell as a female trailblazer in the “male dominated field” of sex trafficking. When I saw Govindan, she was co-hosting her newly launched, weekly New York City show, Jungle Cat Comedy, with her co-host and friend Mohanad Elshieky. Govindan also performed a set of her own, with a wide range of jokes that touched on her father’s no-nonsense texting style and, of course, the time she scammed the KKK out of free textbooks for a course in college.

Speaking to Paste, Govindan says she and Elshieky created Jungle Cat Comedy to fill a void in reliable, weekly comedy shows in New York City. They also wanted to carve a space for comedians with a diverse range of lived experiences to perform as their authentic selves, without pressure to “tokenize” or “throw their identities under the bus.” Their opening show on January 18 included performers who have been featured on Saturday Night Live, Ramy, The Tonight Show, and Comedy Central, and unapologetically referenced personal experiences with gender identity, disability, and growing up with immigrant parents. For their third show on February 1, Jungle Cat Comedy featured The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr.

For Govindan, whose experience in the world of stand-up comedy actually began by telling hit jokes online, Jungle Cat Comedy—and the solo comedy hour she’s touring across the country this year—are an exercise in creating space for herself and young comics like her. “I think a lot of venues want someone who’s more seasoned, more experienced, which is very fair—but I also think it’s frustrating to constantly be underestimated when, outside of my internet comedy, I’m good at stand-up,” Govindan said. Internet comedy may be how Govindan made a name for herself, as one of few young South Asian women who cultivated a wide-reaching following in the late 2010s. But viral tweets were just a first step on her unique comedic trajectory, one she’s deeply grateful for while also holding mixed feelings about learning and growing as a comic—and person—for all the internet to see. 

Govindan talked to Paste about launching Jungle Cat Comedy, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, telling family stories without exploiting them, building a long-term comedy career off some viral 2018 tweets, and more.

Paste Magazine: Why “Jungle Cat Comedy”? Is there a particular jungle cat you find most relatable? 

Abby Govindan: So, my co-host [Elshieky] and I love cats, and he suggested “Calico Cat Comedy,” and I suggested “Jungle Cat,” and we just got attached to that, because he’s from Libya and my family is from India, which are both seen in the West as “jungle countries.” We’re proud to be [from] where we’re from and also like this association of the jungle from the Jungle Book which stars a little Indian kid. Once we hopped into the theme, there was really no looking back, our producers put together this gorgeous, lush green poster. We really leaned into the theme and it just fit our personalities.

Paste: How did you get your start in comedy? When did you first realize you were funny?

Govindan: I always enjoyed making people laugh at the lunch table and stuff. Then, I think in 2017, the guy I thought was the love of my life had just broken up with me out of nowhere. I was so devastated and my parents were asking how they could help cheer me up. So, I was like, “Hey, will you guys help me pay for comedy classes?” So I took comedy classes and decided I wanted to do stand-up. I never, ever expected it to materialize into anything more than a hobby. But then some of my first jokes went viral in 2018, and I was able to make a career out of it really quickly, and I think I was making money off of it by like 2020.

Paste: What inspired you to create Jungle Cat Comedy? What do you look for in comedians for your line-ups?

Govindan: So I started The Illuminati Presents last year, because we wanted to create this space within comedy for people to be their most authentic selves without having to worry about being palatable to anyone. A lot of the comedy producers and bookers and hosts are cis white guys, and so we really wanted to cultivate this environment of inclusivity, but also not tokenism. A lot of us feel like we have to make our experiences palatable in order to be seen as viable options in comedy lineups. So, we just put together lineups of people whose comedy we enjoy, not because they talk about being a minority or because they talk about, you know, their experiences, but more so because we just think they’re funny and they shouldn’t have to feel like they have to be tokens in order for us to book them.

Paste: What do you think was missing from the New York comedy scene before Jungle Cat Comedy?

Govindan: It’s really hard to find dependable weekly shows because a lot of these venues are booked solid for months in advance. In order to give you a weekly show, they need some sort of guarantee that you’ll sell out every single week. So in that sense, me and Mohammed really wanted to find a venue and bookers that trust us to book a weekly show, that if ticket sales are lower some weeks, that we’ll make up for it with higher ticket sales some other weeks. So, first of all, weekly shows. And second of all, we really pride ourselves in creating comedy that’s authentic to us without throwing our identities under the bus. We book comics who do just that, like one of my favorite comics and a good friend of mine is Esther Fallick, and she is a trans Jewish woman and talks a lot about her trans identity or Jewish identity, but never once are those identities thrown under the bus—the entirety of her set is, you’re laughing along with her, not once does she ever make you feel like you’re laughing at her, which is so easy to do in comedy. That’s how you can get viral, clicks and a bunch of followers and stuff, but I think it’s harder to really curate a stand-up based on your experience and stay true to yourself. Those are the kinds of comedians that Mohanad and I just love and respect so much, and those are the kinds of people we want to give more time to the spotlight.

Paste: What’s it like being a stand-up comedian whose rise to fame first happened online via social media?

Govindan: It was good and bad—there were a lot of opportunities and I’ve adopted a social media following. I also feel like I did a lot of growing in the public eye, where I’m not really proud of who I was in 2018 versus who I am now. A lot of people do a lot of growing over the course of six years. But I think one thing I kind of regret about being so vocal and outspoken online is that a lot of my growing happened in front of people, where a lot of people are allowed to have that growth in privacy without thousands of people watching them. In that sense, I do kind of wish that I had gone viral maybe later in life, but I don’t have regrets about where I am now. 

When I first went viral, there were so few other well-known Indian girls who have large followings, especially on Twitter; I was kind of one of the first as far as I know. And now I meet a lot of kids, people younger than me, who have found community in each other, the kind of community that I didn’t have six years ago. I’m always trying my best with the information that I have when it comes to saying things or making jokes or taking stances on anything and I’m constantly changing my worldview. I’m constantly changing what I can and cannot joke about. I’m constantly changing with what I talk about, based on the new information that I learned on any given day.

Paste: There are so many things I’m embarrassed about writing or posting from even, like, 2019.

Govindan: I was just a different person back then. And I’ve talked about this in my solo hour, that was also when after I’d attempted suicide, I started taking medications and I also really improved my relationship with my parents. And I don’t even recognize who I was like pre-medication. I’m just so chill now, where before I got on medication, I had all these mood swings and irrational thoughts. On medication, people can really become better versions of themselves. And sometimes I wish I had that without having an archive of my worst moments memorialized forever online. That’s one of my biggest regrets about having an online following, I wish I’d gone viral maybe after I gained some more mental stability. But it is what it is.

Paste: As Twitter has become a less and less stable place in the last year, what do you see as a possible impact that will have on comedy?

Govindan: Elon [Musk] really ruined everything that made Twitter great. We were all already complaining about Twitter all the time. But then, Elon took over and white supremacists came back full-force, the advertisers left. So I have about 180,000 followers on Twitter give or take, and that used to be really valuable. But now I go into these talks with companies that are considering sponsoring me or podcast companies that I’m trying to pitch to, and they’re like, “Yeah, that doesn’t really mean anything anymore. You’re gonna have to try to find an audience on TikTok or Instagram,” which I’m totally OK with doing. But I really felt like the audience I cultivated on Twitter was much more authentic than it feels like the audiences I’ve cultivated on Instagram and TikTok [are]. On Twitter, you could have a conversation back and forth with someone who’s following you. So the more someone interacts with your content, the more it’ll show their content on their feed. When you have a comedy show in their city, the algorithm pushes it out for them, and that’s not quite what happens on TikTok and Instagram, which are incentivized to show your content to people who don’t follow you. 

And now, Twitter is doing that too. You and I are kind of like the last 100 people on this sinking ship, so you know that half your timeline will be tweets from accounts that you don’t know that you’ve never seen before. All these tech companies are just chasing profit at the end of the day. They don’t care about the artists they’re screwing over. It has been disheartening because I think I’ve had to really get creative about my career in ways that I didn’t really have to worry about before Elon took over.

Paste: So much of stand-up comedy really draws from lived experience and is presented as first-person storytelling. How does personal experience shape the comedy you write?

Govindan: For me, personal experience shapes most if not all of my comedy. The hour that I’m touring with is really all about my parents and how funny they are and what they did to me and what they’ve done for me since… I was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. That shapes a lot of who I am and why I’m here today. I just talk about silly, funny little things that happen to me. Like, I met this guy at a bar who wouldn’t stop talking about going to jail and I could tell he really wanted me to ask about it, so I was like, “Oh, tell me about your time in jail.” And then he just started talking about other aspects of his life. He was like, “Yeah, I have a 19 year old daughter, she’s a lesbian. And I said, ‘Don’t bring your little girlfriends around me.’” And I was like, “Why? Because you’re homophobic?” He goes, “No, I’m not homophobic, it’s because she brings the most beautiful girlfriends, and I know their moms are beautiful too. So I hit on their moms, and my daughter gets so mad at me.” And I’m like, “Oh, I thought you were homophobic. But you’re just horny for their moms.” It just took an unexpected turn. I just talked with him a little too much. And then sometimes my friends will tell me funny stories and I’ll be like, “Do you mind if I talk about that in my stand-up and pretend that happened to me?” So, it’s a combination of family things, things that have happened to friends.

Paste: Speaking of: Does your family ever watch your sets where you reference family stories? And if so, do they enjoy it?

Govindan: Yeah, my family’s actually very supportive. I think after I attempted suicide, my parents felt they really had to get their shit together. They were like, OK, would we rather have an alive daughter who’s a stand-up comedian or a dead daughter who’s trying to live up to whatever expectations? Once they hopped on board, everyone else [in my family] hopped on board. So my parents have come to my shows, and they’ve had a lot of fun. I don’t say anything bad about them. I’m truly just saying funny things. And there’s some family stories that my family gets a humongous kick out of me telling on stage last year, I had my entire family front row, and before the show I was like, “My entire family’s front row, please laugh and enjoy yourselves, I have to prove to them this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” Then every time I made a sex joke, like the entire room turned to look at my family to see how they’d react. And so I called it out, like, “Guys, they’re fine. They’re enjoying themselves. I’m making money on stage, I’m paying my rent.” 

And then my family loves this story of how I got banned from every single casino in the state of Pennsylvania, because I tried to bring a fake ID to one casino and then if you get caught at one casino, they’ve banned you from every one in the state. It was during a family reunion and I was the youngest one, so everyone, like all 20 of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were standing around me when I got sent to casino jail. So, lived experiences, funny bits and pieces here and there, my family really enjoys my stuff. And it’s because I don’t ever throw them under the bus at any point. There’s ways to elicit laughter from the audience without making them feel like they’re laughing at you.

Paste: Who would be your dream comedian to join a Jungle Cat Comedy lineup or generally collaborate with

Govindan: I’m lucky enough that I’ve worked with a lot of comedians that inspired my journey, like Russell Peters was one of the first or was the first Indian comedian I ever saw. And I opened for him in 2020. When I was in high school, I was a humongous fan of Hasan Minaj, and I was able to open for him a couple of years ago. I’m a really big fan of Ramy. I’d love to have him. We have Roy Wood Jr. for a show, which I’m very, very excited for. Ali Wong is another big favorite of mine. John Mulaney is obviously far too famous to be doing a weekly New York City comedy show, but if we’re just telling you everyone who’s currently out of my league, I might as well include John Mulaney in there. There’s so many that I look up to and admire who have inspired my journey. I watched a John Mulaney stand-up special when I was a senior in high school, and he was really funny. I think the most talented comedians can make stand-up look easier than it actually is. It didn’t feel like John Mulaney was getting on stage and doing a set, it really felt like he was getting on stage and talking at a dinner party.

Abby Govindan and Mohanad Elshieky host Jungle Cat Comedy at Sesh Comedy in New York City every Thursday. 

Kylie Cheung is a staff writer at Jezebel reporting on gender and power at the intersections of politics and culture.