‘Have to go there’
Sugar Sammy pushes people’s buttons to get the laughs
As standup comedians go, Sugar Sammy is huge.
The bilingual show he played for four years in Montreal boasted 421 sold-out performances, sold 372,000 tickets and made him the bestselling artist with a one-man show in the history of la belle province.
He’s had an HBO Canada comedy special, a francophone TV show (“Ces gars-là”), hosted the “Just For Laughs Comedy Tour” twice and performed 1,500 shows in 29 countries in English, French, Hindi and Punjabi.
He’s a legend, a groundbreaker, a multicultural ambassador and harbinger of things to come.
And yet, I’ve never heard of him. Jeez, how is this possible?
“I guess I’m a household name to some, but not to others,” the laid back 41-year-old tells me over the phone from a tour stop in Ottawa.
“Back in the day you had three channels, five radio stations and two newspapers, and that’s where you’d get your culture and information.
Now everything is so fragmented because there are so many channels and outlets.
“There are stars you hear about that you’re like ‘Oh, this guy has 16 million followers, but I don’t know what this guy is.’”
He laughs. “I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I like the fact I’ve been growing slowly.”
But how will you achieve world domination in such a niche environment?
I don’t think that’s my goal. World domination requires too much energy. I just want to work every day and not worry about a mortgage and have my fan base so every time I put my shows on sale, they’re there. I don’t know if that’s OK — to have a middle class ambition.
You‘ve cited Eddie Murphy’s 1983 concert film “Delirious,” which you discovered as an eight-year-old, as the prime inspiration for your career. Are you aware he says the F-word 230 times and the Sh-word 171 times? My question to you is, why was an eightyear-old watching “Delirious” in the first place?
My question to you is, what are you doing counting these words?
It was listed in Wikipedia. But seriously, you haven’t answered my question.
My parents used to go to an Indian movie store and rent all these bootleg movies for a dollar, with three on each tape. And one day I said ‘Can we rent one in English?’ and my mom said fine, and she didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was. And we took it home and that was it: it changed my life.
Were your parents shocked by the language?
They started giving me sh — about watching it. And then they started watching it. And we watched the whole thing together as a family. So that was my delinquent childhood right there.
A few years ago, you auditioned for TV shows during pilot season in L.A. and found yourself typecast as convenience store owners and Indian food restaurateurs. Frustrating, no?
They wanted me to be like that guy who came from India (Apu on “The Simpsons”), but I didn’t look like that guy. If you look at me, I’m like this second generation Indian who grew up in North America and has this Western sense of how things work.
This was 2010, 2011. Have things changed since then?
The internet and digital world have opened up more intelligent ways of presenting things. There’s so much competition out there you can’t just give people that hacky sitcom that existed 20 years ago. No one’s gonna watch that. Comics are creating their own material. Kumail Nanjiani’s “The Big Sick,” Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” and Mindy Kaling. They’re creating their own roles. They’re lots of fun and inspiring to watch.
“Sugar Sammy” — It sounds like the title of a blaxploitation movie. Tell me about your name.
At McGill (University, where he earned a degree in marketing and cultural studies), I used to throw parties to pay for tuition and the girls started giving me that name because I used to invite them for free at the clubs. That was my marketing technique and looking back it was pretty genius. But it worked really well. And I just kept the name.
You speak four languages. What’s the market for an IndoCanadian comic who speaks Punjabi, Hindi, English and French?
I don’t combine them in one show. That would be a very, very niche market — a one-off. But individually I feel like it’s opened so many doors for me. In Quebec, I was able to tour my
show (“You’re Gonna Rire”) for four years. I sold 372,000 tickets. It was crazy. If I didn’t know French and didn’t have this multicultural, multilingual point of view, I don’t know if it would have done that. Quebec saw it as something unique.
And outside Quebec?
If you look a Trudeau’s Canada right now, on a worldwide level, we’re pretty unique in terms of what’s going on in terms of culture, philosophy, the fact we’re inclusive. In some countries, people are like ‘Wow!’ They’re envious. In France, I was talking about how our prime minister
wished ‘Happy Ramadan’ to the Muslims in Canada. I said ‘Your president would never do that.’ No one disagreed. I think they liked seeing that difference. The contrast is fun.
Biggest laugh you ever got?
It happens when you address those things people are afraid of and go places they tend to avoid. My opening line in France was ‘Hey, I’m happy to be here. You guys are my favourite Arab country!’ And that right there is such a big statement: ‘I can’t believe he went there.’ And at same time, it’s like ‘Great, he went there!’
Biggest laugh in the U. S.?
I have a joke where I say ‘To detect Trump supporters and get under their skin is easy. All you gotta do is combine all their fears with Jesus.’ You just have to say ‘Sir, you know Jesus was black, right?’ and some guy will go, ‘No, he wasn’t.’ And I go ‘Yes, SHE was.’ Then he goes ‘Jesus was not a woman!’ And I say ‘She wasn’t born that way!’ And I have ruined that man’s day.
Despite your popularity in Quebec, you’ve had death threats. Death threats?
I pushed the sovereign buttons. I took out an ad on a billboard all over the subway system in English (illegal in this bilingual province) saying ‘For Christmas, I’d like a complaint from the Office de la langue francaise.’ There are so many layers to that joke. ‘Well, if we give him the fine, we’re giving him what he’s asking for. But if we don’t then we’re not doing our job.’ It’s a fun thing to have them have that conundrum. It caused an outrage all over the province. And then I got the death threat.
You’re dealing with irrational hotheads. Why court controversy?
My job as a comedian is to make fun of things that happen in society, and when they’re so in front of you and prevalent, you have to go there.
What’s the thrust of your Kitchener show.
I’ll be there with Alonzo (Bodden) and Gina (Brillon) — so there’s an Indo-Canadian, that’s me, a Latina American woman and an African American man. You get three differing points of view about the world today that complement each other really well onstage.