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Sugar Sammy can't be stopped
It's a gross understatement to say that Sugar Sammy's bilingual stand-up show, You're Gonna Rire, has had a successful run. After kicking off in February of 2012, the show has been extended time and time again due to popular demand and the latest added dates means that it will now run until April 2015. All this means that Sammy stands to add another 40,000 to the 250,000 tickets he's already sold in total for his You're Gonna Rire and En Français SVP shows.
“I love doing this show now even more than when I started it,” says Sammy. “I enjoy doing it every night because the pressure of the media premier is gone. The show has a good reputation and people enjoy it. Now I just go on stage and have fun. I'm able to improvise and add new material and take out stuff that I don't like anymore. It always evolves.”
Still in residence at the Olympia Theatre, Sammy says he couldn't be happier with the venue.
“I love that place. That's my favourite comedy theatre in the city. It was the most underrated comedy room before we moved in there. I remember playing there on a show for the Haitian community in 2009 and thinking to myself, ‘Wow, this place rocks.' It has 1,400 seats, but it feels like a comedy club,” he says.
“That's the best combo you can get for a big theatre show. It feels like even the last row is close. Sometimes I'll do crowd work and I'll be able to chat with the guy in row T and everyone else can hear what he's saying.”
From this success has come other opportunities, such as the French language sitcom he co-stars in along with Simon-Olivier Fecteau on V. Following a well-received first batch of episodes, the shows was renewed for a second season, which will start in the new year.
“The focus is the friendship between two guys, and the fact that these guys in their thirties are still living the life of a 16 year old,” he says. “That's the fun part of the show.
“We're going to push it a little bit further. In season one, we wanted to see how far we could go without the government kicking us out of the province. We're also trying to get the characters to evolve.”
With his profile ever on the rise, Sammy has also landed an advertisement contract with none other than Apple for a series of commercials hyping the iPhone 6. Whereas American ads feature the voices of Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, in Quebec, Sammy and Fecteau take on that duty.
With everything going swimmingly for the stand-up, he recently made a big life change at long last.
“At the tender age of 38, I moved out of my parents' house,” he says. “The whole province was telling me that it's time to move out. It was peer pressure. You abandon some material but then you pick up so much more about living alone. But the thing is, I'm not too far away from my parents. I'm like five minutes away. I always swing by and see them. After this interview, I'm going over.”
For more information and tickets, visit www.olympiamontreal.com/en/ and www.sugarsammy.com