try and make it into America at 28.

I feel like they don't say that to men.

But I said it to me.

I'm very

South Asian.

Deep down.

And I wanted to be a doctor and that was my plan

for my life.

Now I got hit by a car and I was unable to walk

for over a year because I hurt my back pretty

badly. And my brother had to take me to the

toilet every day and there's something about that

it sort of gifts you perspective and you realize

that you shouldn't be taking yourself too

seriously and you shouldn't be taking life for

granted. And that kind of changed my outlook on

the rest of my life.

I was an English teacher at 21.

A man walked up to me in a pub, started a

conversation with me, told me he thought I was

funny and he told me about some big audition to

become a TV presenter.

I'd never wanted to be on television.

I'd never done anything, I had no experience.

At first I said no.

And then he said it was 1,000 pounds a day and I

was like, "Yes, please. I'll

have that email."

And overnight I became a TV presenter on one of

the biggest TV shows in the United Kingdom, which

I was wholly unprepared for and didn't really

become good at for like another year, which was

mortifying to have to learn that publicly on

television. But I did it anyway.

I sucked it up and I took the criticism and I

kept going.

And after about three years of doing

that, that started to go well, I was restless.

I want to try something new.

I got offered a job at BBC Radio 1 as a radio DJ,

which is an incredibly hard job because you are

driving the desk all by yourself while speaking

at the same time, counting down to a live clock

and you have the whole of the BBC at your

fingertips, which is petrifying and all of the

cuss words, all of them, they're just like

rolling around your brain and you just want to

scream one of them live.

I ended up making history as the first woman to

ever host the official chart on BBC Radio 1 on

its 60 years on air.

I was the first and that was an amazing

moment of privilege and then, after about two

years of doing that, I was restless again.

I had a health scare.

I found a lump in my breast.

They make you wait a week to find out if it's

cancerous and it wasn't.

And so I decided that I would make a "F--- it"

list. I did.

When I got the biopsy results back and they were

clear, I decided to just take the leap and book a

one-way ticket to Los Angeles with no visa, no

contacts and not enough money to do that.

But I did it anyway because, really, what do you

have to lose other than your life?

So I did leave my relationship and my entire

career that I built in the United Kingdom.

I came anyway and my first audition was for

"The Good Place" and Mike Schur gave me the job

because he's a very strange man who gave a

complete novice, who'd never acted before, a job.

I had been Titania on stage when I was

nine years old at school so I'm not entirely

without experience.

Thank you very much.