Tell Me Your Story

If you grow up skateboarding around New York City, like Northwestern sophomore Nikash Khanna did, you are bound to meet some interesting people. But not everyone decides to interview those people … and then create a documentary series that goes viral on social media.  

“I couldn’t tell you where the idea came from,” says Khanna, who launched his YouTube docuseries Portraits in October 2022 while he was a junior in high school. He didn’t have any formal training in film, he says. “Just looking around me, there were so many real stories I wanted to tell.”  

The series features informal interviews ranging from less than 60 seconds to 40-plus minutes. Khanna’s subjects are “anyone I find intriguing,” he says, including people often stigmatized by society — formerly incarcerated people, people struggling with addiction, people experiencing homelessness, school dropouts and others. The interviews delve into their personal lives, challenges they’ve faced and other experiences. 

Khanna’s goal, he says, is to connect his viewers to stories they would not encounter otherwise. 

Those stories have resonated. With more than 30 Portraits published, Khanna has more than 230,000 TikTok followers, and his videos have received over 100 million views across his social media accounts.  

Now a radio/television/film major at Northwestern, Khanna says he’s found a supportive community of friends and professors who have encouraged him to “do what you think is important.”  

For Khanna, that means forming genuine connections with people. “I see other people online doing interviews that feel exploitative … or superficial,” he says. “That doesn’t sit right with me. … I try to keep in touch with the people I interview.” 

He remembers meeting one of his Portraits subjects, Emmanuel, outside a Chick-fil-A in Chicago in fall 2024. “He had a sign inviting people to play him in chess: ‘50 push up if you lose.’ … That caught my eye,” Khanna says. Though they didn’t play chess, the two began chatting. “I didn’t realize he was homeless until about a minute into our interview.” 

Khanna and Emmanuel kept in touch after their interview. When Emmanuel was hospitalized for an infection, Khanna visited him, often buying him a meal. Emmanuel died last winter. But Khanna is grateful he had the opportunity to tell his story. 

“He was a blunt, honest person. I liked that about him,” Khanna says. “And I liked how passionate he was about chess. A lot of people, as they get older, they forget about the things that make them happy. … It was nice to see somebody in his situation never let go of how much he loved chess.” 

Khanna regularly hears from viewers who say that his videos helped change their life by encouraging them to reconnect with a family member, work toward overcoming an addiction or simply understand something new about themselves. He continues to make Portraits, interviewing interesting characters from Chicago’s eclectic neighborhoods.  

Avantika Singh is an editorial intern for Northwestern Magazine.