Russell Peters’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Russell Dominic Peters (born September 29, 1970) is a Canadian stand-up comedian, actor, and producer. He began performing in Toronto in 1989 and won a Gemini Award in 2008. In 2013, he was number three on Forbes‘ list of the world’s highest-paid comedians, and became the first comedian to get a Netflix stand-up special. He also won the Peabody Award and the International Emmy Award for Best Arts Programming for producing Hip-Hop Evolution (2016). He lives in Los Angeles.

Early life

Peters was born in Toronto, Ontario to Eric and Maureen Peters. When he was four, the family moved to the suburb of Brampton. His older brother Clayton now serves as his manager. Peters was raised Catholic. His parents were both of Anglo-Indian descent, and his late father was born in Bombay, India.

Peters attended Chinguacousy Secondary School for grades 9–10, and North Peel Secondary School in Bramalea for grades 11–12. In school, he was regularly bullied because of his ethnicity. He eventually learned boxing, which helped him resist the bullying.

Peters also became a fan of hip hop in his youth. By the 1990s, he was a well-connected DJ in the Toronto scene.

Career

Peters began performing in Toronto in 1989. He has since gone on to perform in several countries.

In 1992, Peters met American comedian George Carlin, one of his biggest influencers, who advised him to get on stage whenever and wherever possible. Peters said he “took that advice to heart, and I think that’s the reason I am where I am now.” In 2007, 15 years later, he hosted one of Carlin’s last shows before Carlin’s death the following year.

Peters credits his 2004 performance on the Canadian TV comedy show Comedy Now!, which was uploaded onto YouTube and became viral, as the turning point in his career. While the initial video upload featured his entire 45-minute performance, YouTube users subsequently uploaded segments of the performance in which Peters focused on individual cultural groups. According to Peters, those segments were seen by the targeted cultural groups and were well received by them. The video and its viral nature was referred to by Peters on his performance, Outsourced; when the audience cheered when he referred to earlier jokes, he exclaimed, “Look at you, you filthy downloaders!”

In 2017, Peters made an appearance on Top Gear America in the third episode of season 1 as one of the guests.

Notable performances

In 2007, Peters was the first comedian to sell out Toronto’s Air Canada Centre, selling more than 16,000 tickets in two days for the single show. He ended up selling more than 30,000 tickets nationally over the two-day sales period. He broke a UK comedy sales record at London’s O2 Arena when he sold over 16,000 tickets to his show in 2009. His show in Sydney on 15 May 2010 had an audience of 13,880, making it the largest stand-up comedy show ever in Australia. Peters’s performances on May 5–6, 2012 in Singapore also set attendance records for a single stand-up comedian at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Peters hosted the Canada Day Comedy Festival 2006, and participated in a USO tour of Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Africa and Greenland in November 2007 with Wilmer Valderrama and Mayra Veronica. He also produced and starred in the radio situation comedy series Monsoon House on CBC Radio One.

Peters was the host of the televised 2008 Juno Awards ceremonies in Calgary on April 6, 2008, for which he won a Gemini Award for “Best Performance or Host in a Variety Program or Series”. The show received the second-highest ratings of any Juno Awards broadcast. Following the show’s success, Peters accepted an invitation to host the Juno Awards for a second consecutive year; the 2009 Juno Awards took place in Vancouver on March 29, 2009.

On September 28, 2013, Peters was awarded the 2013 Trailblazer award by the Association of South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment (SAMMA) for good contributions to comedy. He is among the first South Asians to achieve international success in the field.

DVDs and book

Peters released his debut comedy album, Outsourced, of his performance aired on Comedy Central on August 26, 2006. The DVD version is uncensored; it has sold more than 100,000 copies, and remained on the National DVD Chart over one and a half years after its release. Peters released a second DVD/CD combo, Red, White and Brown, in Canada in 2008, and in the U.S. in early 2009. It was recorded on February 2, 2008, at the WAMU Theatre in Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was self-produced and financed by Peters and his brother Clayton. In May 2011, Peters released The Green Card Tour: Live from the O2 Arena, a live performance recorded in front of a total audience of 30,000, over two nights at O2 Arena in London, England. The show was directed by Dave Higby, who produced Outsourced.

On October 26, 2010, Peters published his autobiography, Call Me Russell, co-written with his brother Clayton and Dannis Koromilas.

Earnings

According to Forbes, Peters earned an estimated $15 million between June 2009 and June 2010, continuing his run as one of the highest-paid comedians, after earning an estimated $5 million the prior year. Forbes ranked him as the third-highest-paid comedian. In 2013, he earned $21 million, according to Forbes‘ estimate.

Comedic style and religious beliefs

Peters’s stand-up performances feature observational comedy, using humour to highlight racial, ethnic, class and cultural stereotypes. He often refers to his own experiences growing up in an Anglo-Indian family, and impersonates the accents of various ethnic groups to poke fun at them. As he told an audience in San Francisco, “I don’t make the stereotypes, I just see them.” In a 2006 interview with The National, Peters observed that he did not intend to put down or offend different races and cultures, but tried to “raise them up through humour”.

Peters is widely known for his punchline, “Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.” It ends a joke he tells about his childhood with a traditional Indian father, who used corporal punishment on his sons. Another punchline he uses is “Be a man! Do the right thing!”, which relates to a story of a Chinese man trying to get him to pay more for an item at a shop.

When interviewer Larry King asked Peters, “Is there such a thing as too taboo?”, Peters replied, “I don’t talk about religion because I think people are a little weird about religion, especially nowadays, and I’m more of a science guy than I am a beliefs guy. I’m more into facts than I am into beliefs.” In an interview with Al Jazeera, Peters said he refuses to talk about religion. Subsequently, in a 2018 “Kill Tony” podcast, he identified “as an atheist”.

Personal life

Peters proposed to girlfriend Monica Diaz on July 10, 2010 at the Los Angeles International Airport and announced their engagement via Twitter. The couple married on August 20, 2010 at A Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The wedding was attended by about 20 guests, including an Elvis impersonator. Soon after, Peters told The Canadian Press that Diaz was pregnant, saying, “Did I get married because she was knocked up? I would say that expedited it.” Their daughter named Crystianna Marie Peters, was born two months early on December 14, 2010.

In a March 2012 interview, Peters revealed that he and Diaz were divorcing. As of October 2016, he was engaged to Ruzanna Khetchian.

On December 4, 2018 Russell announced via Twitter that he and girlfriend Jennifer Andrade were expecting a child. Jennifer Andrade was the Miss Universe Honduras in 2012. In the following April, he and she announced that she had given birth to a boy, whom they named Russell Santiago Peters.

Peters lives in Los Angeles, California and owns two homes there. He also owns homes in Las Vegas and Vaughan, Ontario.

In 2010 Peters established the Russell Peters North Peel Scholarship, an award worth up to $21,000 and intended to finance up to three years of college. It will be awarded annually to a student from Judith Nyman Secondary School (formerly North Peel) with a strong academic record and the intention of attending college.

Books

• Call Me Russell (2010, Random House Digital, Inc.) – ISBN 0-385-66965-8

Awards and nominations