Nasim Pedrad

Nasim Pedrad (Persian: نسیم پدراد‎‎; born November 18, 1981) is an Iranian-American actress and comedian best known for her five seasons as a cast member of Saturday Night Live (2009–2014) and for co-starring in the first season of the Fox horror-comedy series Scream Queens. She also co-starred in the short-lived Fox sitcom Mulaney as well as having a recurring guest role in New Girl.

Pedrad was born in Tehran, Iran, to Arasteh Amani and Parviz Pedrad. Pedrad and her parents lived in Tehran until 1984, before immigrating to the United States. Her younger sister is comedy writer Nina Pedrad. Both sisters are fluent in Persian. The sisters were raised in Irvine, California, and graduated from University High School. Nasim graduated from UCLA School of Theatre in 2003. She was a member of the UCLA Spring Sing Company.

Early work

Pedrad was a performer with the Sunday Company at The Groundlings. She frequently performed her one-woman show Me, Myself & Iran at the Los Angeles divisions of ImprovOlympic and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. The show was selected for the 2007 HBO Comedy Festival in Las Vegas. She received an LA Weekly Best Comedic Performance of the Year Award as the lead in the comedic spoof After School Special.

Pedrad made her first television appearance on an episode of Gilmore Girls. In 2007, she made a cameo appearance on The Winner. She had a recurring role on ER as Nurse Suri. In 2009 she had a guest appearance on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Saturday Night Live

Pedrad joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2009 as part of the 35th (2009–2010) season. Pedrad is one of a handful of cast members (joining the Italian-born Tony Rosato, the New Zealand-born Pamela Stephenson, the English-born Morwenna Banks, and the Chilean-born Horatio Sanz) to be born outside North America, and being of Iranian ancestry she is the show's first female Middle-Eastern cast member. Pedrad became a repertory player in the 2011–12 season after two years of being a featured player. Pedrad left SNL in 2014 to work on Mulaney. However, the show was cancelled in March 2015.

Recurring characters

Celebrity impressions on SNL

Other work

In 2011, she was a recurring voice on the Fox animated series Allen Gregory. She appeared with a small role in the 2011 film No Strings Attached. In 2012, she had a supporting voice role in the animated feature film The Lorax and a small appearance in The Dictator. In 2013, Pedrad had another supporting voice role in Despicable Me 2. In the autumn of 2014, she left Saturday Night Live to star in a new Fox sitcom, Mulaney. On October 18, 2014, Fox shut down production of the series by reducing the 16-episode order by three episodes. Filming for the thirteenth episode had just been completed prior to the order reduction, and the fourteenth episode was about to enter production.

Beginning in 2015, Pedrad has a recurring guest role as LAPD officer Aly Nelson on the Fox sit-com New Girl. She portrayed Gigi Caldwell in the first season of Fox horror-comedy Scream Queens.

In 2016, she appeared in a commercial for Old Navy alongside comedian Kumail Nanjiani and other SNL cast members Cecily Strong and Jay Pharoah.

Film

Television