4 min readMumbaiUpdated: Apr 15, 2026 11:31 AM IST
Samay Raina has redeemed himself in public eye with his new stand-up special Still Alive, which details his side of the story during the India’s Got Latent controversy last year. In February 2025, guest and YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia had made an obscene joke on Raina’s popular YouTube show, which led to three FIRs being lodged against them. Now, Raina has revealed when and how he wrote his new standup special during that turbulent time.
“I wrote it after it all started in Feb. I had a show in four days, which I couldn’t cancel. I needed to address the elephant in the room. I had to say something about this,” recalled Raina. “When I cracked one joke about this for the first time in Washington DC, the whole floor was shaking by the applause. It was great. I told them I didn’t have another joke since it happened to me only a day before. But when I addressed the controversy, it was the biggest laugh of the night. So, I thought I’d have to write more on it. It felt therapeutic,” he added.
As Raina kept writing and adding more jokes to every show, by the end of his US tour, he had 15 minutes of tight content on the controversy. But he couldn’t continue that upon his return to India since all his shows had gotten cancelled, thanks to the controversy blowing up by then. Though he had another tour starting in May, he had two months to go before he could test in front of a live audience.
So, he called up senior comic Vir Das, who was also on the verge of cancellation post his controversial I Come From Two Indias standup special in 2021. “He said, ‘I just wrote about it. Whatever you’re feeling right now, just note it down. You may not have a perspective today, but you’d get it some day.’ I took the advice because why not. My folder is full now. I kept writing through March and April, and tested the jokes during a tour in May,” said Raina on Chalchitra Talks.
He also revealed that he returned to The Habitat, the same venue where he shot the India’s Got Latent episode, for special spots in the open mic. “The audience went crazy when I showed up at the end. The seventh show I did there, I found my end. It was a one-hour show. They had tears, I had tears. I put my pain down on paper and showed it to the world as it is, and helped ourselves through it,” recalled Raina.
Hailing it as “the best material I’d written” by then, he kept making it better through his tour in May. But he wrote it within two months. “It’s the fastest thing I’d ever written because there was so much pain within. Otherwise it takes a year to write a special,” said Raina. He also admitted he’s healed from the standup special and has come a long way from last February, when “I looked and walked like a dead body”.
Story continues below this ad
Raina also revealed that like Allahbadia, who apologized immediately after the controversy, he had also tried to record an apology video on the advice of his lawyer. “I recorded an apology video nine times on the second day of the controversy. I was doing whatever people were saying. I was f*cked,” recalled Raina, who never ended up posting the apology video.
