Meet Pooja Tripathi, the internet’s rudest barista

There is a woman in New York who does not drink coffee, yet there she is, standing behind the Brooklyn Coffee Shop counter, reading a provocative book—a different one every time, there is no world in which she’s actually finished any of them. She is full of disdain, has a vocal fry, and she is mean. She is the archetypal barista every city in every country seems to produce, and she appears on my screen at 6 pm, New Delhi time. “Is New York the new New Delhi?” Carrie Bradshaw once wondered, and now so do I.

Writer and actor Pooja Tripathi, the aforementioned barista, has just woken up; it’s 8:30 am in New York. I, meanwhile, am sitting across the world in a full face of makeup, as if I’m the one being interviewed. Truth be told, I wanted to make an impression (and hide the face that had survived a full day of office air) on her, or on Thyme, her alter-ego, I’m not quite sure.

Thyme is an unbothered, anti-authority barista at the Brooklyn Coffee Shop (BCS), a fictional hipster cafe in New York, created and written by Tripathi. Alongside her co-worker Cale—played by Darryl Gene Daughtry Jr (DJ), Tripathi’s longtime friend—the two are usually too emotionally exhausted to even make a drink. Each episode brings an even more eccentric customer through the door, played by an actor or comedian on rotation, which has included Padma Lakshmi, Kumail Nanjiani, season regular Benton McClintock, and singer Becky G, among others. 

But the Webby Award-winning show is about more than just coffee (some would argue that it’s not about coffee at all), it’s a social satire. Even though its references skew distinctly American, the characters are somehow universal. There’s the privileged, bratty schoolboy (who has his own intern) enrolled at the prestigious Timothée H Chalamet Academy for Boys. The brunch girl running late to her girl’s girl club debrief, who gets lectured on fair compensation for labour. The girlboss feminist who insists on a female buffalo’s milk but can’t be bothered to tip the woman behind the counter. And of course, the situationship girl, who is spiralling because her situationship hasn’t texted back in 25 hours and 19 minutes, not that she’s counting.

A couple of years before BCS became a thing (in 2023), Tripathi was already making sketches on social media on an iPhone in front of a green screen, until her cinematographer friend offered to shoot them in a real coffee shop. “It’s so funny how there are these media companies that plan these things out. They are like, ‘Oh, we have a five-year plan and we want to do this...’” she says. “With me, it was just that my boyfriend was like, ‘I think you need to do these weekly’.”

Tripathi and DJ, who have recently moved to a new and much larger space since their old location shut down, used to help each other with self-tapes for auditions before they became co-workers. She knew she had to write a character for him in the show when she saw the Juilliard audition for a live-action remake of The Fairly OddParents. “He was so funny in it. It was different from other auditions he typically did that I’d helped him with,” shares Tripathi.

As with most creative decisions on the show, Tripathi casts each guest by instinct. The pipeline for finding them has grown considerably: “We get tons of DMs and emails,” and not only from actors, but from management teams, PR companies, and shows looking for a promotional boost. “We have a huge spreadsheet of all the people that could be on the show. But it comes down to me just feeling if the person works or if they might bring something we haven’t seen before on the show.” 

Tripathi is a compelling actor because for most of her viewers, it’s hard to tell where Thyme ends and she begins. Even something like smiling gets read as a character bleed. “I posted some headshots the other day, and I’m smiling in them, and so many comments were like, ‘This is AI’ and ‘I’m disturbed by this’.” Some of the overlap is earned, though. Tripathi admits sharing Thyme’s wackiness. She’s also big on all kinds of crazy lattes (without caffeine) they come up with at BCS. She loves her golden milk and beetroot latte, the works. Much like Thyme, Tripathi views the world in an alternative way. But she believes that unlike her character, she’s much easier to work with. “I don’t think that I’m rude like her. I’m a lot nicer.”

Pooja, BC (Before Coffee Shop) 

As the only child in a South Asian household, Tripathi wasn’t expected to become the ultimate cliché, but she was still expected to go to medical school. And if that wasn’t going to be the case, there were four other things lined up. “When it was clear that there was no hope, everyone kind of gave up, and I just did my own thing.” She pivoted to business school instead, as a way to buy herself time. After graduating, she landed in fashion, until it became clear that working a corporate job just wasn’t for her.

While still at her desk job, Tripathi started working on Amsterdam Ave. (2019)—a six-episode web series—with her friend Dionne van den Berg, who also funded it. The show landed her a manager, and she started auditioning regularly, even as she juggled several odd jobs for five years. “I’m actually quite risk-averse, which is funny because I ended up taking so many risks.” Looking back, Tripathi can tell that there were hints all along. Like the time she took a class about comedy writing, or when she became the star of a play in her senior year of high school. “It wasn’t that hard to become the star of the play, not that many people auditioned,” she sells herself short, but it was still the first time she had ever done anything like that. 

With BCS having hit a few milestones, like a weekly episode cadence and brand deals to sustain itself, Tripathi is now looking to expand the universe further, starting with more supplemental content on YouTube. “I think we can definitely be selling merch too, which is something that I’m trying to work on. And there’s an opportunity for a live aspect of the show where maybe we have an experience where you can come and order from us for a couple of hours. I would also love to do a branded Brooklyn Coffee Shop coffee that we could sell.”

For Tripathi, the whole ride has been surreal. She’s always looking forward to her next email. As she puts it, “the amazing thing about the internet is that you never know what’s coming around the corner.” While she knew BCS was distinct enough to land, she had no idea it would travel as far as it has, India included. “A lot of these experiences or the satire that we portray feels so New York City. And I was worried maybe at first that it was too niche, but I think with globalisation, there’s an element of this in every city.” As for the love from India, her theory checks out: She’s Indian, playing a character Indian actors would never get to play. Touché, how many Indian Marxist baristas do you know?

Images: Thomas King

This article originally appeared in Cosmopolitan India's July-August 2026 print issue.

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