Maya Sharma Is More of a Passion Pit Than a Vampire Weekend

Thanks to the coronavirus, comedians are now trapped at home like the rest of us, so we decided that while we’re all self-isolating, we’d do something a little different from our usual “Follow Friday� column. Instead of interviewing up-and-coming comedians we love on Twitter, we’re going live on Instagram every week to check in on some of our favorite people in comedy and get a firsthand look at how they’re handling the pandemic. So welcome to our new version of the column, now titled “Follow (From a Safe Distance) Friday.�

This week, I battled the scourge of deep, seething eyebrow envy to sit down for a digital chat with Maya Sharma (Chris Gethard Presents, Ladies Who Ranch, musically stuck in the year 2008) about how she’s keeping it together at the one-year mark of the pandemic. She told us about her extremely Oberlinesque intro to doing stand-up comedy, got nostalgic about the indie kings of the early aughts, and debated the merits and flaws of all the cool bars in the borough of Brooklyn that she simply can’t wait to get back to. She also shared with me her complicated and nuanced feelings about birds: “There was a pigeon on the patio and it was there for a really long time, and we made, like, extended eye contact. Like, really for too long. And I asked it out loud, ‘What do you want from me? Like, what?!’ And that kind of, for me, is how I relate to birds. I respect them, I respect them. But they do freak me out and I’m scared of them.�

You can find Maya on Twitter and Instagram at @goodjobmaya.