Russell Peters is driving around the
Hollywood Hills, looking at properties. If you’ve seen the MTV Cribs episode featuring his 22-ft.-high foyer
ceiling, turntables, giant bathtub built for two and considerable porn collection, you know that his current
L.A. abode is cushy. But Peters is looking to upgrade, especially in this favourable market. “The one I’m
gonna get now will smoke that one,” he says.
I caught him by phone, right after breakfast — 4:30 p.m. PST. “It’s ’cause I’m a comic,” he says. “I’ve been
living this life for 20 years so you know, this is when we eat breakfast.” He starts to tell me about his
upcoming 20th Anniversary Tour and then, “Holy F***! This guy almost hit me on the side, did you see that
s**t?” he says to his companions in the vehicle. Apparently Peters was about to move into the slow lane
(wise, considering the circumstances), when a car whipped around him on the right. “I got one car in front of
me you p***k,” says Peters — his tone incredulous, not angry. “Sorry… he just swung by in the slow lane and I
was about to get in that lane!”
I’ve heard there are crazy drivers in L.A., I say. “They’re not good at all,” he says. “People call ’em crazy
’cause they’re just — a crazy driver is generally a good driver who just drives like a maniac. These people
are idiots. They just can’t drive.”
Peters moved to Los Angeles three and a half years ago. “I had reached the ceiling in Canada — you can only
go so far and then you gotta move out and grow some more.” For Peters, the growth doesn’t seem to be
stopping—at home or abroad. He’s done sold-out tours in Australia, America, Canada, Africa, Asia, Europe, the
Middle East and the Caribbean, along the way selling out Madison Square Garden, the Nokia Theatre Los
Angeles, Sydney Opera House and the Hammersmith Apollo (multiple times).
And while his profile swells at hyper speed in other countries, he still seems like a genuinely Canadian
superstar — something that can’t be said for all local celebs who have blown up worldwide. He hosts the
Gilda’s Club benefit concert each year, and hosted the Junos in 2008, for which he won a Gemini, and in 2009.
Peters added his hometown, Brampton, Ont. to his upcoming tour, a show that will benefit the William Osler
Health Centre Foundation, and raise money for Brampton Civic Hospital. His mother still lives in Brampton,
and Peters says he comes to Toronto at least once a month. “I come in and I see my mom. I see my friends and
I sneak out — but I’m there quite a bit,” he says. “Home is home, you can live wherever you want, but your
home is where you’re from.”
And where he’s from, a city of over 400,000 people in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), is at the heart of a
lot of Peters’ comedy. “Whenever you’re an outsider, you always have a better view of what the inside is.
Being a brown guy I was always an outsider, and then being in Brampton I’m an outsider again because you’re
just outside of Toronto,” says Peters. Being a Canadian entertainer, with America’s high profile looming to
the south, made him a triple outsider. “My whole life was based on being an outsider and watching everything,
and that’s why I pay so much attention to the little things that people do, because I’m always watching,” he
says.
Growing up in the GTA also gave Peters the multicultural exposure that is the fuel for so many of his best
gags. To see Peters perform is to watch one hilarious cultural observation after the other — never glaring
stereotypes, but always truthful, experiential ruminations that most people can relate to. Stuff that we
didn’t realize was funny until Peters put his spin on it and said it out loud. His Indian and Chinese bits
are probably the most commonly regurgitated by his fan base, but Peters doesn’t spare anyone — Jamaicans,
Koreans, Jews, Italians, English.
Peters is funny, even over a bad cellphone connection. He’s a natural entertainer and it seems obvious that
he wants to make people around him laugh. I ask him what line he gets the most from fans. “It’s usually
‘somebody’s gonna get a-hurt real bad,’” says Peters, referring to the stand-up bit where he imitates his
father’s disciplinary tactics from years ago. “But it’s always really misquoted and it’s like completely
butchered. It’s like ‘Hey, someone’s gonna get spanked!’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ or it’s, ‘Hey, you’re going to
get a smacking real bad,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re quoting it and you’re quoting it badly — how do you do
that?’”
Peters caught a good break when somebody put his February, 2004 Comedy Now! episode on You Tube. The exposure
from that Comedy Network show gave the already rising star a huge boost and a first step toward the boom
that’s solidified his celebrity status. In recent years, he’s toured the world, appeared on The Tonight Show,
performed with comedy superstars Dave Chappelle and George Carlin, and released his first major-label CD/DVD,
Outsourced which he followed in 2008 with Red, White and Brown. In total, his comedy performances have 25
million views on You Tube.
"Comedy kind of went into a slump in the early '90s, it kind of fell into a funk where nobody really cared
about it, and it was easy to get good at it because nobody was paying attention to it."
But Peters sowed for years before reaping the big-time benefits. When he got into comedy in 1989, the comedy
boom had just died. “I was only 19 and I was the only young guy then,” he says. “I had no peers in comedy
because everybody was a lot older than me and everybody was complaining about how great it used to be.” At
first it seemed like bad timing, but looking back, it was an opportunity for Peters to perfect his craft.
“Comedy kind of went into a slump in the early ’90s, it kind of fell into a funk where nobody really cared
about it,” he says. “And it was easy to get good at it because nobody was paying attention to it.”
Peters’ strategy was to perform wherever and whenever he could. “I didn’t think about it twice, it wasn’t
like I had a mission or I was setting up to become this guy,” he says. “I was just doing it because it’s all
I knew how to do, and it’s all I could do.” The money wasn’t exactly rolling in, either. “Whatever little
money I was making, it was all the money I was making, and I had to do it as much as possible to make as much
little bits of money to equal something. It’s like a series of dots form a line.”
Peters has to shush his companions (“you guys can’t talk because I have ADD and it distracts me — I want to
hear what you’re saying too!”) to finally tell me about the upcoming 20th Anniversary Tour hitting Canada and
the U.S. this spring, summer and fall. “I’ve been writing like crazy, so I’ve got at least an hour and a half
worth of new stuff, and then at some point I’m going to put in the old stuff,” he says. The old stuff
consists of remixed classics from previous shows. Hundreds of thousands of lucky fans will get to see him
live, but thousands more have been disappointed; not surprisingly, Peters’ shows frequently sell out.
Perhaps due to the fact that no culture is spared Peters’ mockery (making all cultures feel included), his
appeal is truly global. A Toronto-based producer recently told me her best Russell Peters story: She was on a
bus in Zambia, in the middle of Southern Africa, when she overheard a group of guys in the front of the bus,
reciting word for word a particularly famous Peters joke that centres around the pronunciation of the first
name, “!xobile.” (The exclamation mark, as Peters tells it, represents the click sound that as westerners, we
associate with various African languages.) “We got to talking, and it turns out the guys were from Kenya,”
the producer told me. “Sure enough, they knew all his jokes. They thought he was the funniest human alive,
and were super excited that I was from the same part of the world as Russell.”
"I think we live in a time where people decide what's good, not the powers that be, and what people are being
fed is not what they want to eat."
Peters has managed to gain such fame without major feature films or a U.S. network television show, and
without being splashed on the front cover of major American magazines. His stardom, he says, results from
people thinking independently. “I think we live in a time where people decide what’s good, not the powers
that be, and what people are being fed is not what they want to eat,” he says. “They’re making their own
decisions, and saying ‘this is what we like and we don’t give a s**t if you give it to us because we’re going
to get it.’”
And there’s more ways than one to get your Russell Peters fix. He was in Toronto this past spring shooting a
film with Rebecca Romijn, Donald Sutherland and Donald’s other son Rossif Sutherland. He’s working on other
movie projects, and hopes to expand the acting portion of his portfolio. “At some point, you gotta, you know?
I’ve been a comic for so long that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to abandon stand-up, but at some point I
hope the acting outweighs the amount of road work I’m doing.”
Peters welcomes his success and is satisfied with his achievements to date. “I’m already so far ahead of the
game in my head,” he says. “If I’m still in the same position in five years, I’d be happy.” But he embraces
fame and, refreshingly in a country known for its humility, doesn’t pretend to be uncomfortable in the
limelight, or that he doesn’t want to be a household name. “Yeah, why not? That would actually be foolish to
say no—that would actually be the most Canadian answer you could give,” he says. “I’m going to say, bring it
on.” •
