A Girl Knows How to Hustle.

An interview with Kim Tran.

Meet: Kim Tran. Kim is a writer/actor/comedian currently based in Austin, Texas, and someone who, I humbly predict, is headed for major success.

If you’ve dabbled in the Austin comedy scene at all, chances are you’ve caught one of Kim’s many comedy acts around town. And if you haven’t, you should. Kim is one of the founders of Y’All We Asian, the first *and only* all-Asian American improv troupe based out of Austin, TX and is also a member of Hot Pot Comedy, Austin’s *only* all-Asian sketch comedy group. These days Kim is a Michener fellow completing her Screenwriting MFA at the University of Texas, but that doesn’t even begin to cover all that Kim’s accomplished.

In the time that it takes most of us to earn one degree, Kim earned two (double majoring in Radio-Television-Film and Biochemistry), cycled in the Texas 4000 from Austin to Anchorage, Alaska, to raise money for cancer research, interned for Apatow Productions, and wrote for Amy Poehler’s “Smart Girls.”

So, how does one human find time to accomplish all of this while not yet in their mid-twenties? Well, while clearly possessing a comedic flair and a talent for writing, Kim is also ambitious and dedicated AF.

After watching some of her work, I sat down with Kim to get the scoop on her journey as a writer and comedian.

So, people do this for a living. 💡

“Freshman year I was pre-med and studying biochem at UT. I felt OK about it, but I didn’t feel that excitement that people feel when they’re talking about their passion and I figured now was the time to figure that out if there was any time. I spent most of the summer after my freshman year watching a lot of comedies and I had this… Well, I say realization, but people know this — I had this realization like, ‘People do this for a living, people write jokes for a living… Why can’t that be me?’ I think it was harder for me to comprehend comedy writing as a potential career because, for a lot of Asian Americans, that’s not a regular career route.”

Wikipedia, where all journeys begin. 🌎

“I’d never done anything like comedy writing before and didn’t know where to begin ⎼ I used to think the people on TV made the jokes. So, I Wikipedia’d a lot of comedy writers I like and saw that a lot of them started with stand-up or improv. Improv sounded like more fun to me because you get to work with a group. I started taking improv classes and then in my sophomore year I added RTF as my second major.”

The creative process 📝

“I draw a lot [of inspiration] from my identity as well as relationships ⎼ family, brothers, friends, and partners. All those areas are very rich and have multitudes to explore. My goal is to write complex characters and stories, and by being Asian-American and a feminist, I think my beliefs will naturally bleed through the work. I also draw inspiration from Key and Peele, Ali Wong, Hasan Minhaj, Awkwafina, Frankie Shaw, Issa Rae, and Abbi and Ilana ⎼ So many, I can’t think of them all!”

Representation 👏 matters 👏

“Have you heard of Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl? It was the first American TV show about an all-Asian American family” [specifically a Korean-American family]. “It was on air in the mid-’90s for about a season and then got canceled. Studio execs decided that Asian Americans didn’t do well on TV and so there wasn’t a show about an all-Asian American family until about 20 years later when ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat aired. I grew up not seeing practically any Asian characters on TV or in film…In some ways that reinforced my hesitancy to pursue comedy. Even after I declared RTF as a second major, I grappled with it for a long time. I had never done anything like it and I needed to prove to myself (and my parents, initially) that I could really do this.”

Oh, is this how white people feel? 🤔

“Once, after a show, I had this epiphany when I was standing with some of my friends who are in Hot Pot Comedy and Y’all We Asian. I had this moment where I realized I just felt totally comfortable and at ease with them. I wondered, is this how white people feel all the time? It was this specific feeling of community that I hadn’t felt before in improv and theater settings, and I mean, at this point I’d been doing improv for four years.”

Personify the pussy. ✊

“The first year of my MFA program, I had to take a production class where we were supposed to make a short film. I was brainstorming ideas and thought, oh, wait, what if my vagina could talk? I had never seen it before, and living in a culture where men are so encouraged to talk about their penises… I thought it was a really interesting concept ⎼ The idea to personify the vagina. I thought ‘this opens a door to so many possibilities. I brainstormed ideas like, ‘What would [my vagina] sound like if she had a tampon in?’ ‘What would she sound like if I was riding a bike?’ ‘What would she sound like if I had a UTI?’”

This idea eventually became Kim’s short film, Pussy Talk, which is currently playing the festival circuit.

You can catch Kim live at the Loud and Proud Open Mic Night on Oct 26th at the Asian American Resource Center in Austin, Texas.