Nimesh Patel: ‘Lucky Lefty’
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Comedian Nimesh Patel knew the second he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that he would be talking about it on stage very soon. And about a week later—after successful surgery to remove his right testicle—there he was at the Comedy Cellar in New York City making jokes about his one remaining ball. In this episode, SNL’s first Indian-American writer breaks down how he turned cancer into comedy in his new special ‘Lucky Lefty’ and shares his reaction to the way his comedy mentor Chris Rock tackled his own traumatic incident with Will Smith on stage. He also reveals why he turned down an invitation to appear on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show after inadvertently becoming a hero on the right when he was kicked off stage by Columbia University students mid-show in 2018—and how that experience has made him rethink the debate over “cancel culture” in comedy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is how my guest on this week's show reveals that he recently survived cancer at the very beginning of his latest stand-up special. |
| 0:07.7 | I went to therapy for the first time ever this week. |
| 0:10.6 | Thank you, yes. |
| 0:14.4 | Trying to stop touching kids. |
| 0:24.5 | I said I'm trying. I'm trying. |
| 0:28.1 | I'm kidding. I'm kidding. |
| 0:30.7 | Give me them kids. |
| 0:33.6 | No, I went to therapy for the first time ever |
| 0:35.5 | because I'm trying to process the fact that I had testicular cancer. |
| 0:39.8 | Oh, you didn't know? |
| 0:41.7 | You call yourself fans. |
| 0:44.7 | I wasn't going to talk about it, |
| 0:46.2 | but then my therapist told me to grow up here, |
| 0:47.9 | so here we are. |
| 0:56.8 | This is the Last Laugh! |
| 1:02.5 | I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and that was comedian Nemesh Patel from his new special, |
| 1:07.0 | Lucky Lefty, or I lost my right nut and all I got was this stupid special. |
| 1:11.9 | Nemesh has written jokes for Chris Rock when he hosted the Oscars, helped Hassan Minhaj write his speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and spent one year as |
| 1:16.4 | the first Indian American writer for Saturday Night Live, writing jokes for Colin Jost and |
| 1:21.4 | Michael Jay on Weekend Update. But over the past couple of years, and especially with this |
| 1:26.9 | excellent new special on YouTube, |
| 1:29.0 | he has started to really blow up in his own right, with clips that regularly go viral on TikTok and Instagram. |
... |
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