EDINBURGH 2023: Sachin Kumarendran Q&A

BWW caught up with Sachin Kumarendran to chat about bringing Deceit to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Deceit.

The show is my debut hour of standup that I’ve spent several years developing, and it recounts how various outlandish lies on my part – including pretending to own a mansion and attempts to pass myself off as six feet tall (which I’m sadly not) – got out of hand and led me to a BBC One prime-time TV slot; but also nearly caused me to be marooned on a desert island at one point along the way. The show was awarded Runner-up in the Late Stage Award for Best Show in Nottingham Comedy Festival. And the people of Nottingham have unquestionably great taste in comedy.

How do you feel that your upbringing has shaped your career?

My parents were quite pushy growing up, and always keen for me to go to university; an experience that was helpful as I was around more creative people and in a city with more opportunities to engage with the arts etc. (I grew up in the north east near Middlesbrough, which was not blessed with those things).

I still had an early career that was quite different to what I do now though, in terms of doing a Physics degree and getting a corporate job immediately after; so my current career path has departed from what might have seemed the natural progression. I still do feel like I owe a lot to my upbringing though - pursuing comedy professionally is hard work and I’m not sure I’d have been cut out for the slog if it weren’t for the upbringing I had.

With this being your debut hour at the Fringe do you think you know what to expect from the festival?

I’ve taken compilation and split bill shows to the Fringe before, so I know at least there’ll be one or two afternoons of flyering for my show in the rain whilst I ponder why I didn’t instead use all my savings and annual leave on a holiday to New Zealand. And I imagine there’ll still be surprises, particularly with me not ever having done a solo show before (and at least in previous years, when things went wrong, I had other people to share in the problems with). But in terms of my expectations overall, if people come and see my show, I’ll be happy.

Who would you like to come and see it?

Ideally some kind of wealthy but foolhardy investor, keen to make large investments in young, under-appreciated comedic talent (and do so with incredibly lenient repayment terms). This may sound like an unrealistic set of criteria, but Chelsea FC’s new owner Todd Boehly is a real person who seems to have exactly this financial policy - so if I could get some of his trigger-happy spending behind me, that would be fantastic. 

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

I often encounter a trope that Asian acts will primarily talk about being Asian. I’d like to be known for something other than that, and I feel like in my experience audiences do want to see something more original; and actually a lot of the pigeonholing of comedians in this way isn’t really something that audiences are behind. I’ve tried to avoid pandering to stereotypical expectations in this show and hope that audiences will leave thinking ‘yeah that was unlike shows we’ve seen before’.

Sachin Kumarendran debut stand up show ‘Deceit’ is at Just The Tonic @ The Caves – Out Of The Box at 6.00pm from 3rd – 27th August (not 14th) for tickets go to www.edfringe.com

Photo credit: Steve Ullathorne

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