Next Wednesday, Punam Patel, Vero native and St. Edward’s graduate, stars in the premiere episode of her first sitcom, “Kevin from Work,” on the ABC Family channel. Produced by Aaron Kaplan and billed as an “endearingly awkward love story told from a guy’s perspective.” The pilot is available in full on Facebook, and is being watched by all her friends back home.
While viewers drink in her overblown, hilariously self-assured character, a few young people in Vero may remember Patel’s seventh grade stage debut: playing the part of Corie in a scene from Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park.”
“I got to throw a shoe,” says Patel. “I remember loving the dramatics of that.”
Then there was her role as a “Mama” in “Fiddler in the Roof”: only two lines. “But I really hammed them up.”
And before the St. Ed’s stage, there were the traditional Indian dances she performed for community celebrations of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. “That’s probably what made me fall in love with performing,” she says. “I had very short hair so I would always play the male part in the Bollywood dances and I really got into it.
“I was a very bubbly and outgoing child, always running around and happy and singing and dancing.”
Her summers in high school were spent working at a waitress at Café Vienna, the since-closed Austrian restaurant in Miracle Mile. For a time, she was a barista at the coffee shop in the Vero Beach Book Center. Even those gigs she made the best of: “I gained a wonderful knowledge of Austrian pastries and lattes,” she says.
Through it all, she has had the strong support of her parents, Pravin and Tilottama, though her father, Pravin, reached by phone in Idaho where his other daughter, Bhavisha, was expecting a baby, seemed stunned at all that was happening. “I know, it’s all incredible,” he said.
Punam’s success in comedy has come after a serious amount of study at the University of Florida, where she majored in journalism with a minor in theater.
Moving to Chicago for a job at Groupon, she signed up for a comedy class her first day. The course was taught at an acting academy and performance space known as iO (formerly Improv Olympics). From that came a series of successful auditions: first, for the more advanced Conservatory program at The Second City; then for a house ensemble that took up all her Saturdays rehearsing and performing. After taking understudy positions in the Second City Touring Company then for the group’s E.T.C. stage, she finally won a spot in an ensemble of five, writing and acting on Second City’s resident stage.
That experience, she says now, was the most valuable of all.
“We go through an intense three-month process of writing the revue, where we try out brand-new material every night,” she says. “Sometimes it kills, sometimes it goes up in flames. It makes you less sensitive and keeps you focused on how you can make it better and what worked and didn’t, as opposed to feeling down that someone didn’t like a ‘funny’ you did.”
Building her confidence through the intensive performance schedule – six to eight shows a week – loosened her inhibitions, if there were any left to loosen.
“You learn to let go and just be comfortable in your own skin,” she says. “You learn to trust that you’re there for a reason. If you’re confident, the audience will respond well.”
Patel auditioned for the role of Patti in “Kevin at Work” earlier this year. She got a call back, and eventually the offer. Her character, which she is sometimes allowed to improvise on, is “insane and out there,” Patel says, “but I’ve learned the things she and I have in common, too. It’s fun to bring those parts of myself to the show. And it’s fun to just act completely crazy and off the wall.”
Production began in June, with long exhausting days on set that at one point had her on the verge of losing her voice (she answered Vero Beach 32963’s questions by email rather than by phone, just to play it safe.)
“I feel fine,” she says. “But I think sometimes it just catches up to you and you have to listen to your body when it says ‘I need rest! I’m tired!’ “
Fortunately sleep comes easily for Patel, “usually with a smile on my face,” she adds.
She called it “unreal” to be working with author and comedian Amy Sedaris, who plays a tasteless, sex-crazed middle-aged boss in “Kevin from Work.” Sedaris, a fellow Second City veteran and the sister of comic writer David Sedaris, starred in the 1999-2002 Comedy Central series “Strangers with Candy,” co-written by Steven Colbert and Paul Dinello.
“I feel so lucky to be a part of this team,” she says. “It’s an amazing cast and crew and it’s a show that makes me laugh out loud each and every episode.”
Patel lived for five years in Chicago and only moved to Los Angeles last October. She says she comes back to Vero as often as she can, desperately missing her parents, she says, and also missing Publix.
Yes, Publix. The grocery store.
“I’ve been without a Publix for way too long,” she says. “It may be my favorite place in Vero.”
