Samir Khullar (born 29 February 1976), known professionally as Sugar Sammy, is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer from Montreal, Quebec. He performs in English, French, Punjabi, and Hindi.[1]
Khullar's comedy focuses on cultural, social, and political themes. With a career spanning over 25 years, he has performed in 31 countries, including Canada, the US, France, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and India.[2]
After attending École Secondaire La Voie for high school, where he gained early stage experiences, Khullar attended Marianopolis College while occasionally performing at open-mic nights at the Comedy Works and the Comedy Zone.[4] Continuing to work for recognition on the comedy circuit, he attended McGill University in cultural studies while working as a nightclub promoter, which is where he got his stage moniker.[6]
Career
Sammy was profiled in the Washington Post and the New York Times,[2] where it called him a "fearless comic with a talent for provoking both laughter and outrage".[7] He was named one of The Hollywood Reporter's "Ten Comics to Watch" in 2009[8] and was interviewed for Canada's award-winning W5 current-affairs TV show.[9]
He has appeared at the Just for Laughs Festival seven times, in all three of the English, French, and Toronto editions of the Festival.[11] In July 2017, he hosted two nights of Sugar Sammy's International Gala at Just for Laughs,[12] and in the fall, hosted the 17th edition of the Just for Laughs Canadian Comedy Tour.[13]
He has also appeared at the Sydney Comedy Festival, the Cape Town Comedy Festival, and was invited to the inaugural Johannesburg Comedy Festival in 2009.[14]
International career
Sugar Sammy has performed in 31 countries, including in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.[15]New Zealand and South Africa, where his one-man show sold 15,000 tickets.[16]
He was the first artist chosen by Comedy Central India to tour India, visiting Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi in March 2013.[11]
Sugar Sammy's international TV credits include his own one-hour TV special on Showtime Arabia entitled, Sugar Sammy Live in Dubai, which aired in 14 countries;[17] headlining two TV shows for Showtime, Minority Rules and Friday Night Live; and appearances on CBC, Comedy Now on CTV, The Comedy Network (Canada), The Comedy Channel (Australia), and Dutch TV.
Francophone career
Khullar's bilingual show You're Gonna Rire (transl."You're Gonna Laugh") premiered in Quebec in 2012,[18] earning $17.4 million over four and a half years, and in the process becoming the most successful solo comedy show in Montreal.[19]
In May 2013, Sugar Sammy became the first anglophone comedian to win at Quebec's Olivier comedy awards, where he won the Olivier for Best Show (voted by the industry) for En français svp! and the Olivier for Comedian of the Year (voted by the public).[20] In 2014, he once again won the Olivier for Comedian of the Year at the 16th annual gala, and Apple chose him to perform in their TV ads in French Canada. In May 2015, he was nominated again, for a third year in a row, for the Olivier for Comedian of the Year.[21]
In December 2014, he ran a billboard ad in the Montreal Metro stating that "For Christmas, I'd like a complaint from the Office de la langue française", in reference to the Quebec government organization that requires businesses to run ads in French. After a complaint was received, the English text was blacked out and replaced by "Pour Noël, j'ai eu une plainte de l'Office de la langue française" ('For Christmas, I got a complaint from the Office de la langue française'). This marketing campaign, designed by Sid Lee, garnered much attention from Quebec media and was the centre of heated debates between different linguistic communities in the province.[22]
Since 2016, Sugar Sammy has performed a one-man show in Paris, where GQ described him as "the funniest person in France".[2] In 2018 he was named one of the judges on La France a un incroyable talent, the French equivalent of America's Got Talent.[23]
One-man shows and other productions
You're Gonna Rire and En Français SVP
In 2011, Sugar Sammy performed his (then) one-night-only bilingual show, You're Gonna Rire, in a language called "Franglais", an ode to the common Montreal experience of switching between English and French throughout the day.[24] In an unprecedented experiment, You're Gonna Rire became the first large-scale Anglo-Franco comedy show in Canada.[25] It was described as "50.5 per cent English, 49.5 per cent French" as a reference to the 1995 referendum results.
Initially conceived as a single night at the 1,300-seat Olympia Theater, tickets sold so fast that it extended to 45 performances,[26] with a total of 53,000 tickets sold by April 2013.[27]
In 2012, the bilingual show was also transformed into a fully French-language show entitled En Français S.V.P.! ('In French, If You Please!').
Sugar Sammy continued to perform both shows in Montreal, and the French show throughout the province of Quebec. The shows ranked as the 30th largest-grossing tour in North America according to Pollstar magazine in May 2013.[28] Two years later, the combined shows had sold over 230,000 tickets, with over 100 sold-out shows performed at the Olympia theatre in Montreal alone.[29]
In May 2014, Billboard magazine named Sugar Sammy the top-selling Canadian tour of the 12 months ending April 12, 2014.[30] By the end of the year, he became Admission.com's overall Best Selling Show of 2014, with over 300,000 tickets sold.[31]
On July 28, 2016, Sugar Sammy headlined his last "You're Gonna Rire" show in front of a record-breaking crowd of 115 000 people at the Place des Festivals in Montreal, a free outdoor gig that was part of the Just For Laughs Festival. Before the grand finale, Sugar Sammy had performed both shows 420 times, and sold 371,509 tickets.[32]
In May 2018, "You're Gonna Rire" and "En Français S.V.P." were released on DVD and digitally on iTunes, Google Play and YouTube.[33] Sugar Sammy celebrated the launch by performing five shows at the Olympia Theatre and giving out numbered, limited edition, DVD box sets to the 6,500 fans who attended the event.[34]
Sugar Sammy (France)
Sugar Sammy developed and tested his show "Les préliminaires" at Le Point Virgule in Paris, from September 2016 through December 2016. Sugar Sammy then moved his tried-and-tested show to a larger venue in Paris, l'Européen, and performed his new French show, titled Sugar Sammy, four nights a week in 2017 from March 1 to April 29.[35]
A pure "American stand-up" style show, with just a microphone and no censorship, Sugar Sammy's act included his point of view as a world-travelled Canadian now living in Paris. Previously unknown in France, Sugar Sammy's show at l'Européen quickly became one of the top selling shows in Paris. After rave reviews from critics[36] and by popular demand, Sugar Sammy announced 25 more shows in Paris, set to perform between November 9, 2017, and December 31, 2017, at l'Alhambra, moving from a 350-seat theatre, to a 600-seat theatre.[37]
After selling over 25,000 tickets and presenting over 134 performances in France, Sugar Sammy was dubbed the "Best of 2017" by Paris Match magazine, who referred to his show as "grand art".[38] Thanks to the success of his first run, Sugar Sammy continued his residency at the Alhambra Theatre until December 2018, as well as touring the rest of France, Belgium and Switzerland.
Télérama: "Virtuose de la punchline, du rythme et de l’impro."[40]
Paris Match: "Il est étonnant en scène, constamment en hors-piste, allant chercher les spectateurs sur les terrains les plus dangereux. Du grand art."[41]
GQ France: "Le plus drôle des Français est Québécois." ('The funniest Frenchman is a Quebecer.')[42]
C à vous: "Il a un sens de l’improvisation, c’est comme une conversation à 100 à l’heure avec le public."[43]
Konbini: "Il débarque sur scène avec une aisance et un franc-parler dévastateur."[44]
HBO Canada special
Sugar Sammy's biggest TV credit is his 72-minute HBO Canada special, which premiered on June 14, 2009, across Canada and ran continuously throughout summer.
It became one of the network's highest rated TV specials and a first for any Canadian. The special was eventually acquired by Air Canada and was aired on all international and domestic flights.[45] Due to popular demand, the special was eventually released on DVD, where it went straight to #1 on the stand-up comedy best-sellers list on Amazon Canada.
Ces gars-là TV series
In February 2014, Sugar Sammy and French-speaking comedian Simon-Olivier Fecteau launched the ten-episode series Ces gars-là on Quebec's French V network, starring the two comedians, directed by Fecteau, and written by the two principals along with India Desjardins.
A buddy comedy à la Wedding Crashers and Swingers, inspired by the lives of the two writer-comedians, the series follows their searches for love, their relationships with their families and how they deal with the rules of their own friendship.
Unusually, Sammy's English-speaking fans have followed him to a show on a French channel.[46] The successful series was prolonged into a second season.[47][48]
As the show wrapped its second season in April 2015, it was renewed for a third.[49]
Just for Laughs was a comedy festival that was held every July in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1982, it was the largest international comedy festival in the world. In addition to the festivals themselves, Just for Laughs also developed, produced, and distributed other forms of comedy entertainment, such as television programming.
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