Kathreen Aziz Khavari (;) is an American actress, writer, and producer best known for her role as Patricia on HBO's Insecure, Samantha on HBO's Big Little Lies, and for voicing Ms. Marvel in various Marvel Entertainment animated series and video games.
Khavari first gained recognition when her sketch Brain of Terror, in which she played eleven different characters, went viral after it was featured on Upworthy. Before that, her sketch Shit Oakland Says went viral, while her webseries Famous Farrah garnered attention and was later optioned to Warner Bros.
Khavari was born and raised in Oakland, California to Iranian immigrant parents. After graduating from Skyline High School, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, studying public health, then later earned a Master's degree from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in Control of Infectious Diseases.
Khavari realized her childhood passion of acting was unwavering, and upon returning home from London, she took small acting jobs while working in the public health field. She made her off-Broadway debut in âÂÂYou Are Dead, You Are Hereâ at the Here Arts Center in New York.
In response to Donald Trump's "Muslim Ban", Khavari made headlines at the premier of Big Little Lies when she wore a dress that read "My Iranian Immigrant Mother Teaches Your Kids How to Read".
Khavari's satirical sketches, which she posted to her YouTube channel Brain of Terror, touched on various social justice issues including gun control, Islamophobia, women's reproductive rights, and police brutality against black men in America.
She voiced Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan) in numerous Marvel animations including Avengers Assemble and the Marvel Rising franchise.
Khavari and her writing partner, Chuck Neal, launched their podcast, Strongly Worded, where they do dramatic readings of strongly worded written exchanges that their guests have engaged in.
In 2022, she was the voice of Badyah Hassan in the Netflix animated series '. She was also announced as the voice of a new Transformers robot, Twitch, in the Nickelodeon series '.
KhavariâÂÂs Oakland-based pilot, Embrace, debuted at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in their Indie Episodic category. The pilot also won the Episodic Pilot Competition Jury Award at SXSW. The judges stated that it won "for its originality of voice, its depiction of characters and relationships that are both enigmatic and appealing, as well as telling an absorbing story in a world unseen on television at the moment."
She was cast in as the bandâÂÂs costume designer, Yasmine Farangi, marking her fourth time working with Christopher Guest