Russell Dominic Peters (born 29 September 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
Russell Dominic Peters was born on 29 September 1970 in Toronto, Ontario, to immigrant parents from India. His parents Eric and Maureen Peters are of Anglo-Indian descent, who had moved to Canada in 1965 from Jalandhar and Kolkata respectively. His extended family lives in Bhopal, India. Peters was raised Catholic.
When Peters was four, he and his family moved to Brampton. He attended Chinguacousy Secondary School for grades 9–10, before transferring to a trade school as recommended by a guidance counsellor for impulsivity and inattention to 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. He was undiagnosed for ADHD at the time. Peters also became a fan of hip hop in his youth. By the 1990s, he was a well-connected DJ in the Toronto scene.
Peters's older brother, Clayton Peters, serves as his manager.
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 influences, 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 the comedian's death the following year.
On 28 September 2013, Peters was awarded the 2013 Trailblazer award by the Association of South Asians in Media, Marketing and Entertainment (ASAMME) for good contributions to comedy. He is among the first South Asian Americans to achieve international success in the field.
In 2017, Peters made an appearance on Top Gear America in the third episode of season 1 as one of the guests.
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 seventh-highest-paid comedian. In 2013, he earned $21 million, according to Forbes' estimate.
Notable performances
Comedy Now! special
Peters credits the turning point in his career to his 2004 special on the Canadian TV show Comedy Now!, which was uploaded onto YouTube, where it became popular. 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 has also been the one to tell the!Xobile story, and he exclaimed, "Look at you, you filthy downloaders!"
Others
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 5–6 May 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 6 April 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 29 March 2009.
He started his RELAX World Tour in November 2024 in the United States and subsequently performing in other parts of the world. The tour is anticipated to end in June 2025 with the last show in Las Vegas.
In 2025, Peters performed as a headliner in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh Comedy Festival, an event taking place from September 26th to October 9th. The comedy festival overlaps with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, prompting Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, to say in a statement that the Saudi government is using the comedy festival to whitewash its human rights abuses. Peters has performed in the region before, having spoken of his experience performing for Saudi royalty in a 2017 episode of Comedy Central's series, This is Not Happening.
DVDs and book
Peters released his debut comedy album, Outsourced, of his performance aired on Comedy Central on 26 August 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 2 February 2008, at the WaMu Theatre in New York City's Madison Square Garden. It was self-produced and financed by Peters and his brother Clayton.
On 26 October 2010, Peters published his autobiography, Call Me Russell, co-written with his brother, Clayton, and Dannis Koromilas.
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. Also in 2011, Peters received a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.
Comedic style
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.
Personal life
Peters lives in Los Angeles, California, and owns two homes there. He also owns homes in Las Vegas Valley, Nevada, and Vaughan, Ontario.
In 2010, Peters established the Russell Peters North Peel Scholarship, an award worth up to CA$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.
Peters has been a practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu since 2015, and was promoted to purple belt by Jean…