Hi! I’m Nida Chowdhry. In addition to general human stuff,
I write, produce, direct, and act.
Read my Badass Bio here.
I was born in Lahore, Pakistan on a national holiday so the whole city has lights up on my birthday. My parents raised me in Orange County, California in Little Saigon and Surf City. I lived in New York City for a few years where I studied comedy writing and improv at UCB, worked in digital production, and wrote ‘Unfair & Ugly’ under the rock where I reside at all times. These days, that rock is in LA.
My kindred souls include:
My favorite rejection ever is for the Nick Animation internship program. I sent like the most fangirl email expressing how much I wanted to work on the Spongebob cartoon (LOL). It makes me happy to know I tried and how kind they were in emailing me back. Sriracha is one of the most important Asian-American contributions to global society. And over the years, Leslie Knope has really helped me understand who I am: very type-A, very-can do, very too much.
Things I do:
My own shows. I wrote my feature film anxious. and write pilots and web series like ‘Unfair & Ugly’, which you can watch here. TV Show scripts for DC’s Young Justice (HBOMax), Disney’s ‘Mira, Royal Detective’, Kitti Katz (Netflix), Work It Out Wombats! (PBS), and more. I’m currently a staff writer on Netflix’s upcoming show, CoComelon Lane. Angsty essays where I hash out my ongoing ‘identity crisis’ as a Brown Muslim lady and aspiring overall person. Diagrams and Doodles, though my peak doodling era took place in the margins of my social studies notebook in seventh grade.
I’ve been performing since high school. Unfortunately, I began with spoken word poetry, and for that, I owe the world an ongoing apology. After college, I joined ImprovCity, where I performed in improv shows for two years.
I later studied Improv & Sketch Writing at UCB in New York. I took the 400 level improv classes three times to pass. “Nevertheless she persisted” was, in fact, said about me, and not Elizabeth Warren.
I also study at the Acting Center of LA. So, I really am a professional court jester. I have no hopes of surviving any apocalypse. But I have a lot of hopes of being the Pakistani Maggie Smith.
I’ve been organizing and producing things since 4th grade (please see Leslie Knope section above).
As an adult?
Most recently, I wrote, directed and starred in my debut feature film, anxious., currently in post-production.
Before that, I co-founded Stranger Magic Productions (2016-2019) with my friend Yumna Khan. I created two web series which we produced together. The first is ‘Unfair & Ugly’, about a South Asian Muslim American family trying to keep it together. You can watch it here. ‘Unfair & Ugly’ was featured on NBC, Huffpost, Refinery29, and Aljazeera.
I also host my own talk show, #TodayIMet, a conversation series that goes beyond small talk.
Before Stranger Magic, I co-founded Fashion Fighting Famine (2011-2014) or FFF as we called it . We were influential leaders in the global modest fashion movement (before Instagram influencers became a thing). We produced some of the largest international modest fashions shows, drawing in over 3300+ guests over the years and raising $47K for local charities.
We encouraged body-positivity and our models were everyday women of every skin tone, size, and height. I pushed the phrase ‘modest fashion’ which is now the leading term for this movement. We made videos like this and this. And hosted Yuna in concert!
But WHAT ABOUT NOW, NIDA? WHAT. ABOUT. NOW!
These days, I write scripts for new and existing TV shows, and pilot scripts and web series scripts for my own productions. I hope to create more series for you to enjoy in the future. I’m taking acting classes, which I’m terrified of and I love at the very same time. And I’m writing here, on my blog, my very own piece of home on the internet.
