My next guest has multiple specials on Netflix.
Of course you've seen him on Conan.
Please welcome all the way from India, Vir Das.
Vir, thank you so much for being here.
Hey man, it was no effort at all.
I walked six feet from the bedroom over to this chair
and I'm happy to be here. (laughing)
It's the easiest I've done.
Put your hat on. Yep.
No work went into this,
this is great. None at all.
I am not wearing underwear.
I haven't had a haircut in six months
and this is a, yeah, it's pretty easy.
Are you growing the hair out?
I've been growing out.
I'm in that awkward, like I just have like a,
it's like emo things, right now.
Yeah.
I'd say I'm in the, I think, yeah,
I think I hate my parents, but I don't know,
like I'm in that phase right now, so yeah.
Yeah.
We know we still desperately depend on them,
but we hate them.
I listen to five indie bands
and you don't know any of them.
That's the haircut, basically.
It'd be like their first stuff.
Whenever the first thing was we haven't heard it
cause our parents won't let us.
But you, you saying, did you go through an emo phase?
Outside of the big emo phase that the world is going
through right now? No.
Yeah.
Outside of this 6 billion people, existential crisis
that we live in right now.
No, it's been all right.
Like I was telling someone,
I think comedians,
especially like those of us who spend
a lot of time on the road,
we're pretty well trained for a lockdown.
Aren't we?
Like we just.
Yeah
you know, we're in our hotel all day.
We come out for an hour
and even then we don't like the people we meet
and then we leave for 10 minutes and go back home.
Isn't that life right now for everyone?
That's it.
You're on for 10 minutes,
you're locked up in the hotel.
It has been weird though.
Not having shows at night for me,
because I usually get away with like wasting
the entirety of the morning.
It's like the work is at night
and then 8:00 PM rolls around, you're like,
Oh, I didn't do anything.
Yeah.
And then you have to kind of deal with family and be like,
Oh, these people have dreams as well
and lives that I have missed out on this entire time.
But that's been fun.
Other people?
other people.
Yeah.
Are you going crazy a little bit not being able to travel?
Yeah.
This is the longest I've been in one place in 15 years,
like a decade or 15 years.
So I've gotten to know my wife again.
That's been interesting, like it's.
Right.
Did you learn her middle name yet?
No, but we've unlocked like new levels of fighting.
Which is nice.
I feel like normally we'd fight
and I'd have to like go on the road
or we'd fight and I'd have to go do a thing.
Now we fight this time then plot revenge and shit man.
So it's like,
(laughing)
Right.
I'm so glad you brought this up
because this has been happening to me.
I'm locked out with my girlfriend
and I'll notice that I'm fighting
just because I have the time to fight.
Like before I would just give up,
like I gotta go on the road.
You win.
She's gonna win anyway.
So it's just like, end it.
But now honestly, the other night I was like,
Oh yeah, you would say that, you're exactly like your mom.
(laughing)
I don't know that to be true at all.
I'm just trying to pass a Thursday.
I think also you go through like five reactions
to what they say,
and then you kinda go, Oh, COVID.
And then it's done,
where we're all seeing stuff that we just like,
we were fighting the other day
and she was like, you know what?
Burn in hell.
Which is like, that's a powerful thing to say.
when you're fighting about like Parmesan cheese
or something like that
and I was just like, this is jeez,
hell okay, COVID.
That's what this is.
And then you kind of let that go.
But you could just use that as a cop out for everything.
Just like listen.
Yeah.
I cheated on you.
But you know, COVID.
Man, I'm going to milk this thing
for at least three more years.
Like as long as, I don't care, if I'm freshly vaccinated,
I'm still milking this thing.
Yeah.
Are you doing the, like are you doing the elbow
when you meet people or are you doing like distant wave?
Yeah.
So a couple of things I'm doing like the, the elbow bumps,
some people are going for handshakes and I'm like no.
Yeah.
One guy the other day he was doing,
I was do this like virtual show
and then he was the guy checking in
and they'd tell me when to go.
Listen.
He would pull the mask off.
You'd be like,
so we're just gonna have you guys come in and out
and then, what was that?
Like, he could hear out of his mouth.
What are you doing?
What's the protocol, bumps?
I mean, we've had the namaste for years, right?
And now there's like American people
and British people doing the namaste and I'm like, no,
you don't get to do it.
I'm sorry.
This is, I know there's a pandemic,
but I, no this is cultural appropriation.
Absolutely not.
We're not doing yoga.
White people have wanted to do this forever.
For so long.
Like, without signing up for yoga,
you don't get to do it, no.
Right.
Bowing, can you just bow,-No hands but just bow?
You can bow.
I don't know, I feel like that's too much respect
to show someone.
Yeah.
Like, who's the last person you met
and you were like, you know what,
they deserve a bow?
I can't think of.
(laughing)
Like, this person is awesome.
People at the gas station.
Yeah, maybe.
I haven't found anyone bow worthy
in a very long time.
Yeah.
When the lockdown happened,
so in India we have,
household help is a bigger thing in India.
Right?
So everybody has like staff that kind of lives with them
in the house.
I mean we learned that from you guys,
but you kind of forgot about it
on the way that we just kind of kept it going.
Yeah.
But you pay your staff.
In America, we are in a lot of trouble not paying
the people that worked in the house.
So then, when the lockdown happened,
every Indian person was like, look at me,
I'm cleaning my own kitchen
and I'm doing my own dishes
and I'm sweeping my own floor.
And I'm like, it took a global pandemic
to make you behave like every European
and every American in the world right now.
There's nothing special about you doing dishes.
Quit posting that shit on Instagram right now.
I'm suspicious of people with clean apartments.
I think getting apartments should get shut down.
You see someone cleaning they're prepping for a party.
Yeah, I think so.
Just gonna get people out.
Is that not allowed over there?
Are you not allowed to have like gatherings,
like people over, is that.
Not allowed, but it's also America.
So, anything that's the rule people are like,
well, it's my right.
So, there's a lot of States here
that have not locked down at all.
Like, at all?
For the last six months?
Like they've "locked down",
but they've really never locked down.
Like Florida never did a lockdown.
Wow.
Also Florida doesn't do a lot of stuff that America does.
It's really its own.
(laughs)
I wonder if India has a Florida equivalent,
is there a state or a region that people are just like,
this is everything we're fairest about?
The appendix in your body, isn't it Florida?
It's just never worked for anything.
And you haven't been able to.
We don't need it.
Yeah.
We don't even know about it until it becomes a major pain.
It could destroy the rest.
No. I think this is controversial,
but we feel about,
I feel like India and Pakistan feel about each other,
how you feel about Florida.
Maybe that's the way that this goes.
Yeah. Okay.
Like,
Yes.
The fact that you said that, yeah.
Certain regions can be the Florida.
Like Florida is your Pakistan.
Florida is America's Pakistan.
That should be the flag.
That should be the tagline.
Welcome to Florida America's Pakistan.
(laughing)
I'm sure Florida would love the comparison.
Yeah, it is.
We have this like idea of like everyone in Indian accent,
at least in media here,
that everyone is Indian accent is a genius.
Yeah.
So, anyone that's in a heist movie,
which was cool when you were in that show,
a whiskey cavalier spike crime show you're in these like
three piece suits, you get to actually kick ass.
You're not the guy in the van,
which usually you get typecast as that, because America
is just here that you're like, this guy is genius.
Yeah.
Or he's in the Simpsons.
But one of the two is the thing.
The strange thing with that is,
like I was thinking about it the other day.
I don't mind that accent.
Like I know a lot of like Indian kids
who grew up in America, right.
And who were like,
well, I got bullied because of that accent
and it propagates the wrong stereotypes
and I was called Arpul.
And sometimes there's a billion of us
who just sit back and go,
Hey man, Arpul isn't the Indian with the funny accent.
Like you are.
I know a billion people who sound like Arpul,
and it's not strange to us at all,
but on whiskey it was kind of cool
to have an Indian character who wasn't eager
to please and have his stuff together
and just doing numbers.
And this was just a guy who was bad with people,
and good with guns.
Which some Indians are, I think.
Yeah.
It's just cool to see that,
to go against not see every Indian character
through the white perspective
of what we stereotyping things as.
Yeah.
I think so.
Because I really, like,
I think the first thing I ever saw on you
was your Netflix special.
Where right away you got like,
this is my accent.
And for one, I think,
when we're trying to remember the quote,
I might butcher it,
but the Indian accent is going to be perspective
and not a punchline.
A punchline, yeah.
It's important to me.
And also just to show Indians as flawed people.
People who are in doubt
or people who don't have their entire lives
planned ahead of them.
I would love to see an Indian have sex
on American television.
And this is not because I haven't seen an Indian have sex
or I haven't seen American television.
I just haven't seen those two things,
like we have a billion people, we're having sex.
and I've never seen an Indian character hookup on TV.
I've never seen that either.
Right?
They just don't show it.
I think this is,
you should start doing this.
I think you put unsolicited self-tapes,
you edit yourself already famous sex scenes.
Yeah.
You basic instinct yourself right now.
Just already bottomless right now.
You just cross those legs.
Just me with a cigarette
and then just two white cops on the other end
who are bemused instead of arresting me,
which would be.
Yeah.
You know
You'd be applauded as a hero and a pervert.
I think so, yeah.
This is the direction.
As your new manager,
I would love to get you on tape and exposed.
Well, this is so much fun Dir.
Thank you so much for joining me at this show.
It's really nice talking to you.
I don't think I ever got a chance to really talk to you.
I've seen all your stuff and this is a lot of fun.
It was a lot of fun as well.
I hope to see you soon.
And I hope the gigs go well, man.
I hope you enjoy it and just eat it all up.
I'm back out there.
I'm trying to get to India.
So if your people want to follow you
and they wanna, maybe, if you're starting this tour up,
this is happening in January.
In January, I'm @thevirdas on Twitter.
Not because I'm arrogant, just not to be mistaken.
Yeah.
So I had to do that.
@virdas on Instagram and on Facebook,
and just come see the shows.
And there's two or three Netflix specials out
that people can watch.
There are three Netflix specials out and they're fun.
So because you're at home,
please check them out.
I really recommend them.
They're really great.
And people have nothing but time on their hands.
Yeah.
Thank you so much .
Thank you so much.
All right, see you.