Jay Chandrasekhar

Early life and education

Chandrasekhar was born in Chicago to parents who lived in the adjacent suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. Both his father, Arcot Jambulingam "AJ" Chandrasekhar, and his mother, Hema Chandrasekhar, are physicians of Indian Tamil origin and are originally from Chennai. The hospital where he was born, old Cook County Hospital, was where his parents worked. Chandrasekhar has an older sister as well as a younger sister named Sandy Chandrasekhar, who is a lawyer.

Chandrasekhar lived in Oak Park until his family moved farther west in the Chicago area to Hinsdale. He graduated from the boarding school high school Lake Forest Academy. He graduated from Colgate University with a major in European history and a minor in philosophy. During college he spent a semester at Chicago's Loyola University.

Broken Lizard comedy troupe

Chandrasekhar formed the troupe Broken Lizard with other former members of the comedy troupe, Charred Goosebeak, and Beta Theta Pi, people he met during college at Colgate University. Chandrasekhar said he found his path to comedy after acting in high school and college. He did some open mic standup comedy work in Chicago and founded a sketch group called "Charred Goose Beak" at college. After moving to New York, the group was renamed Broken Lizard.

Chandrasekhar began making shorts featuring the troupe, then made the self-funded movie Puddle Cruiser in 1996. The film made it into the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. Then in 2001, they made Super Troopers as an independent movie, which Harvey Weinstein helped to develop at Miramax Films, but did not end up distributing.

Directing

In 2005, Chandrasekhar directed The Dukes of Hazzard.The action comedy film based on the 1970s American television series of the same name was the debut of pop singer Jessica Simpson as an actress. While financially successful, the film was met with negative reviews from critics. He has become an established television comedy director, directing episodes of Undeclared, Happy Endings, Chuck, Community, Psych and Arrested Development. He says that the earlier a director joins a show, the more impact he or she will have on its look and feel.

In 2012, Chandrasekhar made the movie The Babymakers. He directed several episodes of Blue Mountain State. Amazon released a pilot in the 2014 Amazon Original Series that he wrote and directed called Really.

Acting

Chandrasekhar guest starred alongside his cousin Sendhil Ramamurthy in a 2009 episode of Psych which Chandrasekhar also directed. He appeared as the cab driver in the "Terror Taxi" skit from Jackass: Number Two. He appeared as racist comedian Gupta Gupti Gupta in the episode "Basic Email Security" of Community.

Stand-up

Chandrasekhar often does stand-up comedy, sometimes touring with fellow Broken Lizard friends, Steve Lemme and Kevin Heffernan. His stand-up is a mix of jokes and stories, which are usually pretty dirty.

Personal life

Chandrasekhar has been married to actress Susan Clarke since 2005. They have three children, an older son and twins. Chandrasekhar's middle name, Jambulingam, is in honor of his grandfather, and is also his son's middle name. During an interview with Stephen Colbert in 2017, Chandrasekhar stated that the name Jambulingam translates literally in English as "large penis," however, it is intended "as a euphemism for power."

Chandrasekhar's cousin is the actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, who played the role of Mohinder Suresh in the NBC superpower drama Heroes and also appeared in the Broken Lizard film The Slammin' Salmon.

On the pronunciation of his last name, Chandrasekhar says you pronounce it: "CHAN- DRAH- SAY- CAR."