Meet Nadiya Chettiar, the Indian-origin writer creating stories for Young Sheldon

(February 28, 2024) If you’re a fan of The Big Bang Theory fan and are currently hooked to the spinoff, Young Sheldon, you have likely heard of Nadiya Chettiar. The actor-turned-screenwriter is an executive producer on the hit television show, and has been around since Season 5, contributing to twists like Sheldon’s (Ian Armitage) meemaw buying a laundromat with an illegal gambling room in the back, and his strictly Southern Baptist mother, Mary, discovering a sudden penchant for lotto scratchers. Although Season 7 is likely to be a wrap for the show, given what we already know about Sheldon’s early life, the series has continued to peak, winning the National Television Award (NTS) for Most Popular Comedy Programme in 2023. She has worked on a number of hit Netflix shows, including Kim’s Convenience and Working Moms and received a Leo Award nomination in British Columbia, under the Best Screenwriting in a Youth of Children’s Program or Series category for her work on Some Assembly Required.

Just like Sheldon Cooper, going from his modest beginnings in Texas to win a Nobel Prize, Nadiya Chettiar has come a long way. The half-Indian, half-Irish writer grew up in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, in Canada, had originally intended to be an actor and even found some success in her early career path. “Growing up in a small town, I was bored a lot. My dad was a technophile and we had one of those big, white satellite dishes in the 80s,” Nadiya says. “Most people had only 13 channels back then, but we had a lot more. I watched a lot of TV.” While there weren’t too many shows for kids, there were sitcoms, and Nadiya watched them all. It sparked an early love for television, and for acting.

Nadiya Chettiar

Life as an actor

Nadiya Chettiar decided to try her luck as an actor in Canada, and appeared in Little Mosque on the Prairie and The Best Years. She decided to take the leap and move across the country, from Toronto to Vancouver. “I had seen some success as an actor in TO, and thought that I could ride that wave all the way to Vancouver. Well, the wave crashed on the pacific shoreline, leaving me without any job prospects, and wondering what the h*ll I just did,” she said in an interview. Her timing couldn’t have been worse – she moved just as the writers’ strike had hit LA and also dried up work in Vancouver. “It was a terrible career move,” she admits.

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That wasn’t all. “I had spent nearly 80% of my acting career wearing a headscarf (because I look vaguely Muslim, sorta Eastern European,” Nadiya recalls. “I was getting frustrated with rarely getting to represent people like myself in the parts I was auditioning for.” Also, her intution had been telling her that “there was something out there in the world that I thought I would be better suited for, but I didn’t know what that thing was.”

Finding her calling

It turned out that “thing” was writing. Back in Toronto, Nadiya Chettiar had been involved in a long distance relationship with a guy she “really admired, and who happened to be a great writer.” For nearly two years, they stayed in touch through writing, and Nadiya loved reading his emails. “I felt challenged and it made me want to write better, more creative, more funny letters,” she says. They stopped keeping in touch when she moved to Vancouver, but Nadiya realised it “wasn’t just love I was pursuing with my ‘creative and funny’ love emails. I wanted to learn how to be a better writer.”

Her first attempt at a writer was for a radio play, which she calls “an obvious first step.” This grew into a desire to write for TV – after all, she had spent her childhood hooked to sitcoms. Using the radio play as a writing sample, she applied for an online writing course at the Humber College, in Toronto. “That was the beginning of me practicing to write for TV,” she says. “I wrote a few TV scripts in that program, which were terrible. From there I continued to write and take classes and grow.”

Nadiya had stayed in touch with her TV contacts and when it was time to find work, she reached out to them. One showrunner in Canada connected her with other young women writers in Vancouver. She had also worked on building a solid portfolio. Then, she met Jennica Harper, who helped her get her first job as a script coordinator / junior writer on a kid’s multi-cam sitcom, called Some Assembly Required. That was followed by Package Deal, where she worked with Andrew Orenstein, of Third Rock from the Sun and Malcolm in the Middle fame. Not only was this sitcom for adults, it also shot before a live studio audience. “We got to rewrite on our feet and pitch new jokes between takes and let the audience decide what worked,” Nadiya said. “It was so much fun and immediately rewarding.”

Relocating to LA

Nadiya’s first job in LA was as the Executive Story Editor on Life in Pieces, a 2015 USA sitcom that ran for four seasons.

From there, she joined the team at Mom, another Chuck Lorre show set in Napa Valley, California, about a dysfunctional mother / daughter duo. In fact, Nadiya was so inspired by the show when she first watched it, that she even wrote a spec script (speculative screenplay) on Mom for an extension class she happened to be taking at UCLA. So actually making it to the team of writers was a big moment.

“This was my first experience with group writing and they had a really unique way of working,” Nadiya recalls. This was during Covid and although the team worked in person, the writers were in their own part of the building. “Normally you would be on set, in a ‘video village’ where you’re nearby watching it happen,” she explains. “But when they were shooting the last episode of the show we did get to be on set. It was just mind blowing to have studied the show eight or nine years previous and and to actually be there as they’re shooting the last episode.”

She then moved on to Housebroken, an American sitcom starring Lisa Kudrow and Clea DuVall. The reviews were “generally favourable” according to Metacritic but the series wrapped up after Season She joined Young Sheldon in 2022, for Season 5.

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“In some ways, it’s very different and in others very similar to what I have done before,” she says, about Young Sheldon. “Similar as in you begin with a blue sky, you’re just starting to think about what happens.” The best part, she says, “Is getting approvals from Chuck Lorre. He’s very much involved but he’s involved also with a lot of other shows.” On a show as big as Young Sheldon, the job involves working in a boardroom with a team of other writers.

Photo: Write Your Voice

Advice to young writers

Striking an emotional connection with people, and being able to make them laugh or cry is never easy. “The biggest challenge is that trying to make people laugh involves putting yourself out there,” Chettiar says. “You’re showing people what you think is funny, what you think period, and that’s revealing something about who you are.”

The key to being a writer, though, she feels, is to keep at it anyway. “Perseverance is key. Don’t worry if you don’t feel talented enough – you never will,” she says. “My biggest challenge? Not giving into thoughts that I’m a terrible writer and just carrying on.”