Stand-up comedy superstar Russell Peters doesn’t fear deportation back to Canada from his home in Los Angeles under Donald Trump.
“In all fairness, the amount of taxes I pay in that country, they’d be damn foolish to get rid of me. Now that’s a bad business move, and since the country is being run like a business, that would be dumb,” the Canadian comedian, who is of Anglo-Indian descent, told The Hollywood Reporter during a global Relax tour stop in Amsterdam.
Peters — whose earlier global tours like Outsourced, Red, White and Brown, The Green Card Tour and The Deported have centered on the hot-button issue of immigration — isn’t worried as a legal immigrant being removed from the U.S. under Trump’s second White House administration.
“OK, what are they going to do? Send me back to Canada? Whoop-de-do! What a loss for them. Not me. I get to go back home. That’s how I look at it,” the native of Brampton, Ontario, adds. Peters will be returning to Canada in July for the upcoming Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.
The once-dominant stand-up comedy showcase for Hollywood is set to return under new owner ComediHa! and after a financial restructuring and a 2024 event cancellation. “It’s the best. It was the biggest and the best comedy festival for all times. Let’s just say it took a year off. Now it’s back, hopefully it’s better than ever or just as good as it always was,” Peter told THR.
Just for Laughs got its start in the 1980s as an annual festival where Los Angeles and New York talent scouts discovered the next big thing for Hollywood sitcoms and movie roles. But the rise of the internet and social media as discovery platforms for self-promoting comedians over time pushed the JFL festival down the assembly line for nascent comedy talent.
Instead, taking to the road or TikTok and YouTube to hone their craft and build fan followings with an eye to global stand-up touring has become the pinnacle of the comedy profession. The result is lucrative concert touring for global talent like Peters, which has allowed them beyond the comedy club stage to show studio scouts, streaming execs and club bookers gathered at JFL each July how their comedy connects with audiences.
While JFL didn’t discover Peters — he broke out in 2004 when his set on Canada’s Comedy Now! series went viral — he has appeared at the Montreal comedy event a dozen times over three decades. He remembers a pivotal stand-up club act in 2000 at JFL when the late Jerry Stiller came backstage to praise his performance and predict he’d be a big star one day.
“He [Stiller] told me I was going to make it. And I think that was the first time anybody of value in this industry had told me something positive for myself about my career. It really meant a lot,” Peters recalled. He added in 2016, Peters saw son Ben Stiller and his wife in a Los Angeles restaurant and, knowing the Zoolander and Night at the Museum star doesn’t like to be bothered in public, he approached his table anyway.
“I said, hey, sorry to interrupt your dinner. I just want to tell you something about your dad. I told him, and he said ‘Oh, thanks for that. I really like hearing that.’ So he was very gracious about it. And at least I got to tell him while his dad was still alive at the time,” Peter said of the chance conversation before Jerry Stiller died in 2000, age 92.