Vir Das: From ‘Two Indias’ to ‘Landing’
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With five specials on Netflix and millions of followers on social media, Vir Das is an international comedy superstar who can sell out stadiums around the world. But his career nearly came crashing down after he put out his “Two Indias” video in 2021 and had charges brought against him for defaming his home country on foreign soil. In this episode, Das breaks down how he managed to turn one of the most painful experiences of his life into his strongest hour of stand-up yet in ‘Landing,’ which premiered on Netflix this past December. He opens up about what it felt like to be labeled a “terrorist” for speaking out against injustice, shares how he pulled off the “magic trick” at the center of his special and responds to American comedians who complain about getting “canceled” but have never been threatened with imprisonment for telling jokes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the very first joke my guest on today's show wrote about the time he almost landed in prison for defaming his country on foreign soil. |
| 0:10.5 | I was on the BBC homepage, big headline that said comedian polarizes the nation. |
| 0:20.1 | Do you know how badly you have to fuck up before the British say that you divided India? |
| 0:30.0 | This is the last laugh. |
| 0:32.3 | I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and that was comedian Veer Das from his latest Netflix |
| 0:37.2 | special, Landing. The special Veer Das from his latest Netflix special, Landing. |
| 0:39.0 | The special, Veer's fifth hour on Netflix, premiered on the service last month, and I have |
| 0:44.5 | not been able to stop thinking about it since. It's his first special since the international |
| 0:50.2 | incident that totally upended his life and threatened to end his comedy career. |
| 0:55.0 | See, in November of 2021, Veer ended his stand-up show at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., |
| 1:02.0 | by reading a piece to the audience that he called, I Come from Two Indians. |
| 1:07.0 | He knew it might be controversial, but he never could have imagined how big of a stir it would cause in his home country when he uploaded it to YouTube. |
| 1:14.6 | So before we get to my interview with Veer, I want to do something a little different and play the whole five and a half minute to India's speech for you now. |
| 1:22.6 | I think it provides some really important context to both his new special and this conversation. |
| 1:30.3 | The temptation in this moment is to make a video about myself, |
| 1:33.3 | and I don't want to do that because I'm reminded that I come from India. |
| 1:37.3 | I come from which India, I come from two India. |
| 1:41.3 | Those are the Indians that I bring on stage with me right now. I come from in India where |
| 1:46.6 | children in masks hold hands with each other and yet I come from in India where leaders hug each |
| 1:51.4 | other without masks. I come from in India where the AQI is 9,000 but we still sleep on the roof |
| 1:58.1 | and look up at the stars. I come from in India where we worship women during the day and gang rape them at night. |
| 2:04.0 | I come from in India where we claim to be divided over Bollywood on Twitter |
... |
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