Neel Nanda, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ comic, dead at age 32

TV

By Nicki Gostin

Neel Nanda — an up-and-coming comedian who appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — has died. He was 32.

“I [am] deeply shocked and saddened by this. He was a wonderful comic, but a better person,” Nanda’s manager Greg Weiss said in a statement to Deadline. “He had the world in front of him.”

The cause of death was not immediately known.

Weiss also noted that he was fully booked with appearances throughout January and February.

Nanda — who also appeared on Comedy Central’s “Adam Devine’s House Party” — hosted the weekly show “Unnecessary Evil” at the Westside Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.

Following his death, the comedian was mourned by many on social media, including Matt Rife and Dace Cook.

“You were one of the nicest, hardest working comedians I’ve ever called a friend and i hope you can be at peace brother,” Rife wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).

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“I didn’t know Neel Nanda personally,” Cook noted on X, “but reading several tributes is both heart breaking and eye opening.”

Comedy clubs also joined in mourning the performer.

“It is with a very heavy heart we say goodbye to comedy great, Neel Nanda,” reps for The Port Comedy Club in Baltimore posted Saturday on Instagram. “Absolutely shocked by the news. Such a positive force for comedy and a huge loss to our community. Rest in Peace Neel.”

“Thank you for gracing our stage and piano, a great headliner, gone too soon,” the venue added.

Nanda, the son of Indian immigrant parents, told VC Reporter in a 2018 interview that he became interested in comedy when he would watch Comedy Central and transcribe his favorite jokes while in middle school.

“I didn’t realize I was stealing jokes until I was in high school,” recounted Nanda. “When I was in high school I started writing my own jokes using the structure of some of the jokes I had previously stolen.

“I filled up a notebook of jokes and didn’t realize until college that I could go to an open mic and tell them. I actually had a friend read the notebook and tell me, ‘You know you can just go perform these, right?’ I didn’t know, but after a quick Google search I was off to the Laughing Skull open mic.”

He first appeared on Jimmy Kimmel in 2017 and called that his “proudest accomplishment thus far in comedy…Jimmy Kimmel was the first place I performed where my parents were a fan of the host.”