I scare myself in order to do better as comedian: Vir Das

MUMBAI: Actor-comedian Vir Das, who has received an International Emmy nomination for his streaming comedy special ‘Landing’, has said that he loves to “scare” himself with regard to his work and that he really enjoys the process of working on something which is “impossible”.

And it’s this perspective of him towards his work that has brought him international recognition.

Talking to IANS in the light of his nomination, Vir, who also actively takes up acting gigs and is currently busy directing a project, said that he enjoys making the tasks difficult for himself.

Furnishing the reason behind the same, he quoted the example of his recent show, as he told IANS: “I like to remove the trappings of comfort from my shows. I could have done this comedy special at a huge stadium with numerous cameras focusing on me from different angles but I wanted to keep it simple and Netflix was gracious enough to agree to that.”

He further mentioned: “In this special, there’s no set, there’s just one stool. There’s no production as such, there’s only some sand on the floor, and there’s not even any enhanced lighting. In such a case, the special rides just on the words that come out of the comedian’s mouth and the content. So, I like to scare myself in that sense.”

The comic artiste also feels that the greatest achievement for any artiste is when their audience walks back home with a small part of the performer in their minds, a moment where humanity shines through.

He told IANS: “There is a demarcation between an artiste and their personality but the greatest glimpses of artistry happen when the lines between the two are blurred. Every great song is about a real person who broke their heart in a moment of truth, isn’t it?”

To add contrast, the comedian also spoke up on the ongoing wars across different parts of the world be it Russia-Ukraine or between Israel and Hamas. He said in jest everybody wants to know comedians’ opinions on serious things like these because comedy is not enough apparently for comics.

He opined that human beings as a species are cyclical in nature and they keep making the same mistakes that they committed in the past.

“We as a species don’t learn from our mistakes in the past, we are of a cyclical nature, I would say. We keep coming back to our ingrained behavior.”

But he has a glimmer of hope, “Having said that, I’m optimistic because, with every passing decade, we lift more people out of poverty, we educate more people and we document more humanity. The field of medicine and bioscience, for instance, has shown tremendous growth. We do identify more principals and values for the future,” he concluded.

Vir Das’s ‘Landing’ is streaming on Netflix.