Kenny Sebastian: ‘Everyone Warned Me That Comedy Is A Bubble'

The comedian on his latest stand-up special, 10-years of comedy and his honest secret to staying in the game

- Jessica Xalxo

“I want to be as comfortable on stage as I’m in my living room,” says Kenny Sebastian. The comedian who recently dropped his third solo one-hour—The Most Interesting Person In The Room—admits he was on autopilot for part of the process. “When you see the special, I look very confident and happy. That is not how I felt,” he says.

Following in the tradition of noted American comics Jerry Seinfeld, Ali Wong, Tina Fey and Dave Chappelle, Sebastian chose to skip the small talk and take to the confessional for his Netflix debut. Opting for an uncharacteristically bare set this time around, the comedian invokes ghosts of carpets, couches and the good ole’ cup of chai (tea) to slay the ever-looming dragon of stage fright. “I’m very good at hiding it but I wasn’t born funny. I didn’t have this figured out since day one. I just made it my central goal in life to be good on the stage,” he says.

Arriving on the heels of having completed almost a decade in India’s evolving comedy scene, The Most Interesting Person In The Room is Sebastian’s way of voicing his insecurity (“Am I good enough?”) in the only way he knows might meet laughter: honesty. “I wanted you to see me do jokes very easily. And then suddenly, I tell you that I’m actually very nervous and I don’t get why you’re listening to me,” he says.

A couple of viral YouTube sets (Middle-Class restaurant Problems), stints on television (Comedy Central’s