“As India’s biggest stand-up comedian and a Bollywood star, Vir continues to break barriers and sell out venues worldwide,” notes a release. “He has performed over 180 shows across the globe, including a celebrated run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and headlines major stages from Carnegie Hall in New York to the Eventim Apollo in London.
“Beyond stand-up, Vir has created, produced, and starred in multiple acclaimed projects, including the ABC drama-comedy Whiskey Cavalier, the Netflix thriller Hasmukh, and Amazon’s travel series Jestination Unknown. He appeared in Judd Apatow’s Netflix feature The Bubble and is developing several new film and TV projects. When he’s not on screen or stage, Vir fronts India’s premier comedy-rock band, Alien Chutney.”
Das has starred in several Netflix comedy specials including Abroad Understanding (2017), Losing It (2018), Vir Das: Outside In (2020), and Vir Das: Landing (2022). In December, he published The Outsider: A Memoir for Misfits, “a story that follows his journey as a perpetual outsider, using humor to navigate heartbreak, failure, and the quest for belonging.”
A recent New York Times profile observed, “[Das] has amassed a vast fan base in India, but his jokes also translate globally, tackling far-ranging topics like Britain’s exit from the European Union (‘They ruled the entire world; this isn’t the first Brexit to happen in history, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just the first intentional one’); the Trump administration; and the New York mayoral race (he jokes about how, as a brown man with a beard, he has routinely been mistaken for the city’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani).”
A comedy set he did at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2021 (long before it was unofficially renamed for Donald Trump) triggered controversy. He criticized his native India for outdated thinking by its politicians, which unsurprisingly did not sit well with said legislators, who accused him of “vilifying the nation” and attempted to file police charges against him.
The set reportedly triggered innumerable threats against his life. The Times of London reported, “It led to him being banned from two Indian states and receiving more than 50,000 death threats.”