So, growing up, I didn't see
a lot of representations of myself on television.
I grew up mixed race.
I grew up speaking Polish, but as a person of color.
So I don't think I ever really fit into a group.
So it's hard for me to really find characters or stories
that I personally was like, "Oh, that's totally like me."
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
My name is Danny Pudi, and I'm an actor and writer.
I grew up in Chicago, and I went to college
at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
And I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
Then I started doing theater --
I did some musical theater at Marquette -- and comedy.
And I guess I got the bug.
I realized that's what I wanted to do.
And after that, I went to Second City in Chicago.
And really at Second City is where I started to learn comedy
in terms of performance and writing and the craft of it.
And after that I was like, "Okay. I'm in this."
And then I moved to L.A. and gave it a shot.
The first TV show I ever got cast on was "The West Wing."
I had one line -- "Guest list for the Cleveland event."
You probably didn't see me 'cause I was, like, moving off.
So it was actually more like,
"Guest list for the Cleveland event."
That was me.
"Gilmore Girls" was, I think, my first real role in television.
I played a student named Raj at Yale University,
which was super exciting for my family
'cause they told everybody I was a student
at an Ivy League institution.
That was really fun for my family to say --
"My son's at Yale."
It really gave me a sense of what it's like
to be on a set every day.
Shortly thereafter, I landed "Community,"
which was life-changing.
As soon as I read the script, I was trembling
because it was a show that I connected to in many ways.
The character of Abed itself -- I had never read somebody
who was painted in such a beautiful, humane way and funny.
And it was also one of those experiences where I was like,
"I want to be in the show, but I also -- I will watch the show."
I would like -- It felt like it was written for me.
My agents wrote, "This is the role that was meant for you,"
and they have only said that once.
Since then, they've never said that again.
[ Laughs ]
Life is really good.
I am married. I have two beautiful kids.
They're 7 years old.
We live in California.
And it's this wonderful transition phase, right?
I've been working in TV for a while.
I'm working on a new television show
called "Mythic West: Raven's Banquet."
It's the story about a group of developers
behind this massive role-playing game.
Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day are the producers.
Megan Ganz is the show runner/writer.
The name of my new piece is "Running."
It's a personal story.
I've never done anything like this.
And I've sort of been going through this kind of transition
of dealing with my father's loss
and also kind of getting in touch more with my own identity.
And so that's what this piece is really kind of exploring.
Danny, is this sort of heralded Indian American actor
who broke a lot of barriers for Indian American actors
when he was on "Community."
And I think people have always had this image of who he is,
and a lot of this show is about who he really is
and struggles he may have had,
one of them being that he didn't have much of a relationship
growing up with his Indian father
and actually is much closer to his Polish side of his family,
his mother's side of the family.
And it brought up a lot of questions, I think, for us
about how he gets cast
and the performative aspect of our identity
versus the really more complicated aspects
of our identity
that I think this piece explores really beautifully.
No one's really -- No one's seen the show.
No one's ever seen this,
so this is the first time we're doing this.
For years, my mom made me take Polish dance lessons.
Finally last year, I said, "Enough."
[ Laughter ]
Every Saturday, while my friends were riding Huffy bikes
and eating Fun Dip, I was dancing the mazurek.
[ Singing in Polish ]
My name wasn't meant for Polish dance.
Pronouncing my last name isn't easy.
Sometimes I get, "Is it 'Putty'?"
Sometimes I get, "Is it 'Poo-die'?"
I just wanted a normal name,
like the rest of my friends in class,
like Kroplewski, Lewandowski, Matejko,
Pazjura, Polonowski, Dzienisiewicz.
I guess my favorite question is, "Where are you from?"
That's a complicated question.
I'm from Chicago, but my parents are from two other places.
My mother was born in Poland. My father was born in India.
And I guess dealing with my identity
has always been a fun issue in my life.
And I think that's what this piece explores,
is trying to figure out who I am today.
This show deals with the themes of identity,
of belonging, of feeling alienated.
It also deals a lot with sort of philosophical questions
I think we ask as children that never go away,
even when we are adults.
And we see that really beautifully
through Danny's questions for his dad,
questions he had as a kid growing up,
and now Danny's kids' questions for him.
So it has this beautiful frame of how we go through life
thinking we need answers to questions
that in fact may be sort of unanswerable.
Our process has been really trying to figure out
the spine of the play and what is the thing
that's really kind of connecting all of this.
A lot of this has to do with me running.
I'm a big runner.
I've run marathons, half marathons.
I run all the time.
And using that as sort of the idea of why I'm running,
kind of exploring that idea
and tying that to my relationship with my father
and my son.
Where am I from?
Okay. I-I guess it depends on who's asking, right?
If they're wearing Chicago sports gear, I'm from Chicago.
If they are speaking Polish...
[ Speaking Polish ]
If they're South Asian, I'm from Andhra Pradesh.
And if it's a white nationalist, my answer is,
"A white woman's birth canal, just like you."
And then I run.
[ Laughter ]
I'm from a family of immigrants
that made tremendous sacrifices to get me here today.
Okay. So, when I was 11 years old, I went to Poland.
I was excited to see where I was from for the very first time.
I thought everything would make sense.
We boarded this bus in Warsaw
when I heard the word "Z powrotem."
"Z powrotem" means "to go back."
I turned my head, and I noticed this man.
And he was staring at me.
"Z powrotem," he said once again.
He was telling me to go back.
At the time, my impulse wasn't to run
but to correct him and say,
"Actually, I'm 49% Polish" -- 23andMe says so.
So technically, you can only send half of me back.
But I didn't speak.
I pretended to not understand him,
and I angled my body toward the nearest exit
and concentrated on looking safe.
My dad left my family when I was 2 years old,
and I grew up with my Polish mother in Chicago.
In middle school, I told my classmates
that I was the young maharaja
in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,"
and everyone believed me. [ Laughter ]
In 2007, I booked my first TV role, on "Gilmore Girls."
I played a student named Raj at Yale University
with one line -- "Computer crashed again!"
[ Laughter ]
In 2008, I was frisked three times before a flight to Boston.
In 2009, I booked my first lead role,
on an NBC TV show called "Community."
Three out of four people congratulated me
for being on "Parks and Recreation." [ Laughter ]
In 2012, my wife gave birth to our half-Irish,
quarter-Polish, quarter-Indian twins.
No one believes I'm the father. [ Laughter ]
In 2018, I walked past a woman in a bar
who saw my face and yelled, "Terrorism."
In 2019, I checked into a hotel and said,
"Reservation for Danny Pudi."
The receptionist said, "I'm sorry.
There is no reservation under that name,
but we do have a Tammy Ludi."
"That's me," I tell her.
And now I have a new alias.
[ Laughter ]
The hardest part is that it's just me.
I think I'm used to collaborating.
I love ensemble comedy.
I love being given a role
and then sent off to go dive into the world
and then come back and work with people to piece it together.
This is me kind of really figuring out
what is the story that I want to tell.
That's hard because I am in it, you know?
And I'm still trying to figure out the distance
and, like, what's the end line, what's the ending point.
Perhaps there is no ending.
I think that's what I'm trying to learn.
Critical distance is the ability to look at a personal event
that happened to you
and to be able to reframe it for a story
or to be able to glean from it a question
or what you learned or an idea.
We call this narratorial distance, too --
where there's someone telling the story
who has experienced it,
but right now their question of it may be different
from when they were going through it.
I was standing outside when I saw him pull up.
I was worried that I wouldn't recognize him.
It's been 20 years since I saw him.
He was wearing a red coat and driving a Toyota Corolla,
and he jaywalked across the street and came right up to me
and said, "Hey there, Dan."
His voice was softer than I imagined.
"Hey, Dad," I said right back.
He came in for a hug, and I smelled the cigarettes on him.
We stepped into the lobby of the hotel and ordered coffees.
And I watched him.
I watched him pour cream
and stir two packs of sugar into his cup.
This was his routine.
I like my coffee with zero sugar and a gentle splash of cream.
It can't be too creamy.
It needs to be the color of my own skin in summertime.
We sat across from each other.
And for a moment, no one spoke.
We were like these two chess players
stuck thinking about past moves.
I told him I had woke up with a head cold.
His advice was one word -- "Benadryl."
[ Laughter ]
I asked questions -- "When is your birthday?"
"What did you like to do as a kid?"
"When did you come to America?"
"What was it like when you first got here?"
"What was it like when you said goodbye?"
"When you first got here, did you feel alone?"
"Why did you live in Lakeview?"
"And how do you say 'grandpa' in Telugu?"
After our session, we walked to the elevator,
and I studied his face.
He was youthful-looking -- nice skin and a full head of hair.
And I couldn't stop staring at his hands.
His fingers were delicate, long and thin.
And he was fidgeting, just like me.
Inside the elevator, we talked about the Bulls,
Jimmy Butler, and Derrick Rose.
He followed sports, and we were having this normal conversation,
like a normal father and son.
When we stepped outside, we hugged, and he walked off.
I watched him walk across the street,
and in my mind, I thought of this quote.
"The best time to plant a tree was yesterday.
The second best time is now."
But it was too late to say anything.
He was already getting in his car.
So I just said, "Bye, Dad."
"Running" is about one person,
Danny's journey of finding his father,
who left the family when Danny was just a kid
and reconnecting with his father and in the process
asking questions about who he is as a father, as an actor,
as a person, and really very specifically
also about his cultural background.
I'm excited to say these words out loud.
I've never said all these stories out loud.
I've written some of them.
I've had portions of them that I've said out loud.
But I've never put this all together in one piece
in front of strangers.
So that is scary
but also, I feel like, gonna be very valuable for me
to just see how that lands on people and myself.
I think that I need that at this point in time.
Now I just want to tell the story.
I want to just release it, just, like, let it out.
And I think that's gonna be just good for me as a human being
to, like, get that off my chest.
I think I'm still in, like, A. I'm trying to get to B.
I'm aware I'm not trying to get to C yet.
I'm trying to figure out what is the best --
Are we closer to telling the story I want to tell?
And that's what I'm hoping -- after this, that I'll be closer
to telling the story that I ultimately want to tell.
The one thing I always like doing
is kind of going back to my roots.
I think that's the one place where I feel most at home,
where I could truly experiment, make a lot of mistakes,
which is really nice, and be with people,
'cause I think that theater is very unique
in that being in one room with people
in that one moment together,
kind of feeling what something is for the very first time,
it's pretty special and terrifying, which I enjoy.
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]