‘Fame made me difficult': Kumar on losing friends and finding peace at 52
Picture it, Sophia Petrillo manner: Singapore, 1992. The sale of chewing glue has just been banned. The state's very first multiplex is now open up in Yishun. Litterbugs now have to vesture lovely yellow vests while cleaning up the streets for Corrective Work Society. And ane of the brightest stars in Singapore is a elevate queen named Kumar.
LISTEN: House Party For two: Kumar on why he doesn't worry about his jokes hurting your feelings
This was not a homo in a wearing apparel as a simple gag, cross-dressing for laughs like Jack Neo would in the mid-90s with the characters Liang Po Po and Liang Xi Mei. This was a drag queen with a raunchy comedy show at a cabaret chosen Smash Smash Room located at Bugis Street – an area more known, at the fourth dimension, for… well, ladies of the night who didn't tell if you didn't ask virtually the presence of Y chromosomes.
If this seems unlikely today, imagine how Kumar felt 28 years agone.
"I was very surprised, he said, during our conversation over lamb pie for CNA Lifestyle's podcast series House Party For 2 – recorded in the thoroughly professional person setting of an actual business firm party for two in my petty HDB flat. "I didn't know they (Singaporeans) were waiting for someone to outset something daring."
(This podcast was recorded in mid-February. Both House Party For 2 host and guest are at present hibernating safely in their respective homes.)
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Yes, Boom Boom Room turned Kumar into a star to those in the know. Merely The Ra Ra Evidence, which premiered a year later on what was then the Singapore Dissemination Corporation (SBC) made him a household name.
Kumar was so famous that he had to be saved from adoring fans as if he were Lady Gaga in a peculiarly ravenous episode of The Walking Dead. "They had to literally elevator me out of Takashimaya," he said. "It was a bear witness for eight Days and I couldn't exit – the audience was pulling me, pulling my hair and all that. The security had to lift me flat [on his back], through Taka, to the staff elevator."
If people don't find you important, then they don't find you important, lah.
This was back when he was nevertheless living at home with his parents, whose indifference, Kumar said, kept him grounded.
"They don't see yous otherwise – 'You lot're still my son.' So they care for you the same at home. My dad refused to accept the fact that I'm different. My mum was like, 'Mmm hmm… Something's wrong hither but never mind.'"
Just, I ventured, at to the lowest degree they got to see him turn the very matter that fabricated him different into a big success. "That came much afterwards, when my parents came to sympathise that such a affair was possible," he replied. "Dorsum and so, my father didn't fifty-fifty think I was gay – he thought I was a prostitute."
Unfortunately, Kumar's wild rising from random Haw Par Villa performer to Singapore'due south most famous drag queen in a few brusk years proved to be every bit challenging outside of his dwelling equally it was within. The loss of anonymity for him – and those around him who treasured their privacy – took its toll.
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"It was quite tough to bargain with the public. Considering every 24-hour interval, you become anywhere, and everybody knows you. I lost a lot of friends considering they didn't want to get out with me anymore – they didn't want to exist in the public eye. It was very tough," said Kumar. "I'm Leo, and so I love the limelight. But after a while, it got to me. 'I really demand to stop this.' And I wasn't going to shut myself up at domicile, you know?"
"I think because of the fame, it made me into a real difficult person…" he said, pausing to sigh. So he quit working on television for eight years.
Flash forrard to 2022 and Kumar is nevertheless one of Singapore'south nigh popular comedians – and the crown lies a little less heavy after well-nigh 3 decades into his reign. No dubiety due to a few alterations he'south made, at present that he's wiser and turning 52 years old in a few months.
"I endeavour to be a fleck happier, relaxed and chill," he said. "What I came to realise when I reached 50 was that in life, you have to cease expecting. When I was younger and I invited friends over and last infinitesimal they say they cannot go far, I would be like, 'But I planned! I cooked!' Now when they say they cannot make information technology, I'm like, 'Okay, lor.' I don't get upset."
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"Even when people want to borrow money from y'all, you give what yous tin can. If they ask for S$200 and you have S$20, requite Southward$20. But don't expect information technology to be returned. That's when you lot get really, really angry, and that'south when you actually become older and you lot stress yourself over nothing. People brand mountains out of molehills. They're not seeing information technology properly because they're aroused."
"Now that I'm like this, I feel younger considering I'm not angry. If I go angry, I'll inquire myself, 'Why? What's the point?'"
"If people don't detect you important, then they don't discover yous important, lah," he said, shrugging.
It is a philosophy that is simple to the point of genius.
"When y'all reach a sure age, yous'll actually know who will be there for you, and who will not… They don't brand an endeavor every bit much every bit you do," said Kumar. "Yous cannot tell when you're young. Information technology's all life experience. Merely when you grow older, and so you can see it."
Yeah, Kumar is glad to be older, happier and more at peace. Just don't ever make the mistake of calling him "auntie".
"Oh my god, I would really, really slap," said Kumar, clutching imaginary pearls. Forget "uncle", also. A young boy fabricated that mistake at the void deck of Kumar's block recently, and the wee kid received that patented icy stare that immediately fills any mortal with terror and a sense that one might be accessorising incorrect.
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Do non endeavour it under any circumstance. Kumar gets irritated even when his nephew and niece – to whom he is an actual biological uncle – call him that in public. "Because we are in denial near our age!" he laughed. "I nonetheless want to experience immature and stay young."
"Present, I don't even phone call taxi drivers 'uncle' anymore. I telephone call them 'brother'. I wish for the aforementioned thing to come back to me!"
Heed to the full House Party For ii podcast to observe out why Kumar refuses to get on social media (his @thekumarshow Facebook page is managed by someone else), what sort of parent he is (Kumar has ii dogs and an actual human "son" – surprise!), and how he once had an apparition in his hotel room (but combing his hair, every bit apparitions do).
New episodes of House Political party For 2 are published every Sun at cna.asia/podcasts.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/entertainment/kumar-house-party-for-2-podcast-253916
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