Jokes Apart: Padma Lakshmi Contemplates a Career in Stand-up Comedy in Next Act of Career 

Padma Lakshmi doesn’t care being the most beautiful woman in the room, she wants to be the funniest. “That’s who stays with you. Beauty is not an accomplishment, but wit is.” 

The 52-year-old Indian American model, actress, host and author made the revelation in a detailed profile in The New Yorker. Post her life as “Top Chef” host, she is attempting an altogether different creative pursuit — stand-up comedy. The decision came after Hulu put her travel show “Taste the Nation” on hold. She was hoping to transition from the Bravo series to the third season of her award-winning series, she told The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner. She has also in addition a lingerie collection for Bare Necessities,

Lakshmi’s interest in comedy isn’t new. She has taken classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade and appeared on “Saturday Night Live” last fall for a quick cameo. “What attracts me to comedy is the same thing that attracts me to men who are witty,” she told Rosner. “It’s the matter of how you want to spend your time.” 

Lakshmi has been hosting various shows at the Comedy Cellar in New York, which is close to her home, where she platforms “queer, nonwhite or non-male” comedians alongside Jesse David Fox. According to Rosner, Lakshmi has also tried her hand at improv and stand-up while on-stage as she is “learning learning how to be more of [her] wilder, wackier, zanier self.” 

In 2018, when the comedian Louis C.K. “performed a surprise set at the Cellar, she tweeted a rant directed at the venue,” Rosner writes in The New Yorker profile. That performance came “after a period of self-imposed exile following revelations that he had a pattern of masturbating in front of women without their consent,” according to the profile. 

Jesse David Fox, a senior writer at Vulture and the author recalled seeing the tweets and feeling shocked to realize that Lakshmi was a bona-fide comedy nerd. “She was naming comedians that I think a more casual fan might only come to know two, three years later than she did,” he said. 

That’s when Fox reached out to Lakshmi with a proposal to host her own standup show, Rosner wrote. With his help, Lakshmi would have “to highlight the very comedians she believed deserved more attention.” Speaking about the idea, he told Rosner that he was thinking “people would show up out of curiosity, because people don’t associate Padma with comedy in that way.” He also thought the comedians “would do it, because they’d think it was cool to hang out with Padma.”

The show — “Padma Puts On a Comedy Show” — débuted in October 2018, “with a lineup including Larry Owens, John Early, Jo Firestone, Nikki Glaser, and Michelle Wolf,” Rosner wrote. Chris Rock agreed to drop in for a surprise appearance, while Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers m.c.’d. “The comedians worked for free; proceeds from tickets and merch went to charity,” Rosner says. 

In the following years, Lakshmi and Fox mounted two more shows, including a Zoom broadcast during the first year of the pandemic. “They’d run out of tickets before most of the comedians in the show got the chance to share it to their followers,” Fox said. “Which confirmed to me: these are Padma fans. It’s a great lineup, but they were here for her.”

Now Lakshmi has “begun to think of comedy as potentially more than a hobby,” according to Rosner. Last October, she did a cameo on “Saturday Night Live,” in a Top Chef parody. “I got really great feedback,” she told Rosner. 

She is also reportedly in talks with filmmaker Paul Feig, who was behind films like “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat,” about a potential upcoming movie vehicle for her now-crystalizing comedic talents. 

Lakshmi’s career as an actor, which she launched after being discovered by a modeling scout in Madrid as a student, was on an Italian variety show called Domenica In, where, in a co-host role, she’d ham it up by adopting the persona of a fun-loving foreigner with weak Italian language knowledge. She’d later appear in the unintentionally funny Mariah Carey vehicle, Glitter; recently, while exiting the show where she’s made her name.

“Padma Puts On a Comedy Show” débuted in October 2018, “with a lineup including Larry Owens, John Early, Jo Firestone, Nikki Glaser, and Michelle Wolf.”

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Lakshmi’s “comedic chops have been apparent for years to any ‘Top Chef ‘viewer who has seen her quick wit on display.” Her coming timings was also on display on “30 Rock,” where she had guest spot as a “heightened, ridiculous version of myself,” 

Last year, she voiced a role on “Big Mouth,” an animated comedy series on Netflix about teens navigating the mortifying impulses of pubescence. Her character, Priya, drawn with a willowy figure and bedroom eyes, is the mother of a new kid in town. Their neighbor Andrew, a nerdy adolescent voiced by John Mulaney, develops a lustful fixation on her. In a daydream, he fantasizes that the two are tootling through the Italian countryside in a convertible when Priya turns to him and purrs, “Shall we pull over so I can ravish you in a field of poppies?”

The latest installment of “Padma Puts On a Comedy Show,” in March, was a back-to-back pair of shows at the Bell House, a venue in Brooklyn. The bill included Phoebe Robinson, Michelle Buteau, Jaboukie Young-White, and Zarna Garg, a Mumbai transplant whose sardonic, Borscht Belt-esque routines about being a middle-aged wife and mother take on an off-kilter freshness thanks to her rapid-fire, Hindi-accented patter. Mike Birbiglia was going to do a surprise set at the early show; Punkie Johnson would be closing the later one. Both sold out within hours. 

As she marks on her career’s second act, Lakshmi is learning the ropes of comedy — With her stand-up show, Lakshmi is cutting her teeth in comedy — learning and relishing on the impact of her jokes on the audience. 

Padma Lakshmi doesn’t care being the most beautiful woman in the room, she wants to be the funniest. “That’s who stays with you. Beauty is not an accomplishment, but wit is.” 

The 52-yer-old Indian American model, actress, host and author made the revelation in a detailed profile in The New Yorker. Post her life as “Top Chef” host, she is attempting an altogether different creative pursuit — stand-up comedy. The decision came after Hulu put her travel show “Taste the Nation” on hold. She was hoping to transition from the Bravo series to the third season of her award-winning series, she told The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner. She has also in addition a lingerie collection for Bare Necessities,

Lakshmi’s interest in comedy isn’t new. She has taken classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade and appeared on “Saturday Night Live” last fall for a quick cameo. “What attracts me to comedy is the same thing that attracts me to men who are witty,” she told Rosner. “It’s the matter of how you want to spend your time.” 

Lakshmi has been hosting various shows at the Comedy Cellar in New York, which is close to her home, where she platforms “queer, nonwhite or non-male” comedians alongside Jesse David Fox. According to Rosner, Lakshmi has also tried her hand at improv and stand-up while on-stage as she is “learning learning how to be more of [her] wilder, wackier, zanier self.” 

In 2018, when the comedian Louis C.K. “performed a surprise set at the Cellar, she tweeted a rant directed at the venue,” Rosner writes in The New Yorker profile. That performance came “after a period of self-imposed exile following revelations that he had a pattern of masturbating in front of women without their consent,” according to the profile. 

Jesse David Fox, a senior writer at Vulture and the author recalled seeing the tweets and feeling shocked to realize that Lakshmi was a bona-fide comedy nerd. “She was naming comedians that I think a more casual fan might only come to know two, three years later than she did,” he said. 

That’s when Fox reached out to Lakshmi with a proposal to host her own standup show, Rosner wrote. With his help, Lakshmi would have “to highlight the very comedians she believed deserved more attention.” Speaking about the idea, he told Rosner that he was thinking “people would show up out of curiosity, because people don’t associate Padma with comedy in that way.” He also thought the comedians “would do it, because they’d think it was cool to hang out with Padma.”

The show — “Padma Puts On a Comedy Show” — débuted in October 2018, “with a lineup including Larry Owens, John Early, Jo Firestone, Nikki Glaser, and Michelle Wolf,” Rosner wrote. Chris Rock agreed to drop in for a surprise appearance, while Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers m.c.’d. “The comedians worked for free; proceeds from tickets and merch went to charity,” Rosner says. 

In the following years, Lakshmi and Fox mounted two more shows, including a Zoom broadcast during the first year of the pandemic. “They’d run out of tickets before most of the comedians in the show got the chance to share it to their followers,” Fox said. “Which confirmed to me: these are Padma fans. It’s a great lineup, but they were here for her.”

Now Lakshmi has “begun to think of comedy as potentially more than a hobby,” according to Rosner. Last October, she did a cameo on “Saturday Night Live,” in a Top Chef parody. “I got really great feedback,” she told Rosner. 

She is also reportedly in talks with filmmaker Paul Feig, who was behind films like “Bridesmaids” and “The Heat,” about a potential upcoming movie vehicle for her now-crystalizing comedic talents. 

Lakshmi’s career as an actor, which she launched after being discovered by a modeling scout in Madrid as a student, was on an Italian variety show called Domenica In, where, in a co-host role, she’d ham it up by adopting the persona of a fun-loving foreigner with weak Italian language knowledge. She’d later appear in the unintentionally funny Mariah Carey vehicle, Glitter; recently, while exiting the show where she’s made her name.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Lakshmi’s “comedic chops have been apparent for years to any ‘Top Chef ‘viewer who has seen her quick wit on display.” Her coming timings was also on display on “30 Rock,” where she had guest spot as a “heightened, ridiculous version of myself,” 

Last year, she voiced a role on “Big Mouth,” an animated comedy series on Netflix about teens navigating the mortifying impulses of pubescence. Her character, Priya, drawn with a willowy figure and bedroom eyes, is the mother of a new kid in town. Their neighbor Andrew, a nerdy adolescent voiced by John Mulaney, develops a lustful fixation on her. In a daydream, he fantasizes that the two are tootling through the Italian countryside in a convertible when Priya turns to him and purrs, “Shall we pull over so I can ravish you in a field of poppies?”

The latest installment of “Padma Puts On a Comedy Show,” in March, was a back-to-back pair of shows at the Bell House, a venue in Brooklyn. The bill included Phoebe Robinson, Michelle Buteau, Jaboukie Young-White, and Zarna Garg, a Mumbai transplant whose sardonic, Borscht Belt-esque routines about being a middle-aged wife and mother take on an off-kilter freshness thanks to her rapid-fire, Hindi-accented patter. Mike Birbiglia was going to do a surprise set at the early show; Punkie Johnson would be closing the later one. Both sold out within hours. 

As she marks on her career’s second act, Lakshmi is learning the ropes of comedy — With her stand-up show, Lakshmi is cutting her teeth in comedy — learning and relishing on the impact of her jokes on the audience. 

(Photos, Padma Lakshmi/Facebook)