“I love starting out from scratch,” Pandji Pragiwaksono says from a campsite somewhere in West Java, Indonesia, talking to me via Zoom in the glow of a lantern light.
He’s a couple hours’ drive from his hometown of Jakarta but a 27-hour trip from New York City, where he now lives with his wife and two kids. He’s soaking up some family time before embarking on his first-ever English-language tour, which kicks off on Aug. 26 in Australia before reaching the U.S. and Canada.
Pragiwaksono, one of the most successful and controversial (more on that later) comedians in Indonesian history, finds himself at a turning point in his career. Four years ago, the comic, a household name in the world’s fourth-most populous country, decided to start over in America. In Indonesia, Pragiwaksono regularly headlined arenas, performing for tens of thousands of people. In New York, he scraps for time at open mics.
“I’m not making money in the U.S. yet,” Pragiwaksono says. “This next tour is going to change things for me financially.”
Pragiwaksono’s comedic pursuit in America has been an ongoing education. When he first moved to the States, he assumed he could simply translate his jokes from Indonesian to English. “I learned the hard way that it’s not the case,” he says. Comedy is a delicate object; a funny play on words in one language might disintegrate in another. But it goes deeper than language: America and Indonesia have entirely different comedic sensibilities, Pragiwaksono believes.
“Indonesia loves storytelling. A lot of the jokes have long setups with a huge punchline, with a half-punch in the middle,” he says. “People in New York want the joke fast: setup, punchline, setup, punchline.”
Pragiwaksono’s arrival in America spurred something of a comedic identity crisis. “What is my voice?” he asked himself. Back home, his act is brash and extremely political; he mocks specific state officials and picks apart the Indonesian government. In America, his jokes take a softer approach, like a bit in his first English-language special “Boss Level” about how we might treat rats more kindly if they had the cute, bushy tails of squirrels. “Even the way I speak is different,” Pragiwaksono says. “It’s like two different comedians.”
“When I moved to New York, I tried to do something topical, but thousands of comedians are doing the same,” he adds. A fellow comic told him he needed to lead with what made him unique, so Pragiwaksono started telling stories about Indonesia. He devised an opening joke that conveys who he is while transposing American politics onto his heritage: “To those who aren’t familiar with Indonesia, it’s so peaceful, Barack Obama spent his childhood there; it’s so beautiful, Donald Trump goes there to play golf; and it’s so far away, Joe Biden probably won’t survive the trip.”
The hardest part of pursuing comedy in America — even for an international star like Pragiwaksono — is the gatekeeping. New York is perhaps the most competitive comedy environment in the world, and to perform at most clubs, a comedian must audition and earn the recommendation of other comics. Once they “pass” at a club, they’re offered time slots to perform (and score cash) throughout the week. Pragiwaksono has only yet passed in two venues — Eastville Comedy Club in Brooklyn and Westside Comedy Club in Manhattan — so his sets are largely relegated to open mics.
For a guy used to the warmth of an arena crowd, Pragiwaksono romanticizes open mics, those awkward showcases of aspiring comics performing largely in front of other aspiring comics. “I learn about how Americans behave socially, about the relationship between parents and children,” he says. “I learned the stereotypes about Florida!”
Pragiwaksono enjoys the fact that in the U.S., a bad joke of his will actually die onstage. “In Indonesia, it gets to a point where when the audience laughs, I’m not really sure if it’s because of the joke or it’s because it’s me talking,” he says. Plus, for Indonesians visiting New York, Pragiwaksono’s career reset has given them the rare opportunity to see a national legend perform in workshop rooms.
Still, some days Pragiwaksono can’t help second-guessing his choices. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting at open mics and I’m like, ‘Things would be way easier if I just go back to Indonesia to set up again,’” he says. “Sometimes the ego pops up, but then I have to push it back down and remember there’s a process I have to go through.”
One curious thing Pragiwaksono has had to adjust to is the two-drink minimum. Since Indonesia is a majority Muslim country — and most comedy shows take place at cafés — alcohol is not a factor. “I kind of understand how drinking makes the room lighter and easier to entertain, but I still can’t seem to understand why you would make it hard on yourself to perform stand-up comedy in front of drunk people,” he says. “It destroys the show a lot of the time.”
Meanwhile,as Pragiwaksono continues to build his career out west, he is locked in a standoff with the Indonesian government. A joke from his 2025 Netflix special “Mens Rea” (named after the Latin legal term that means “guilty mind”) sparked a police investigation into whether he committed blasphemy.
Filmed at the Indonesia Arena in Jakarta, “Mens Rea” devotes a large chunk of its material to criticizing the Indonesian president and vice president. One joke targeted citizens who vote for politicians simply because they post on social media about how often they pray; another bit took on the country’s two largest Muslim organizations for accepting state mining concessions and therefore tying themselves to the Indonesian government.
“A week after the special was released, over 1,000 Muslim people poured into the streets protesting my jokes, saying that it was blasphemy and it was condescending Islam,” Pragiwaksono says. “It caught me by surprise because I have no intentions of condescending Islam. The joke wasn’t even about religion.”
Six people filed police reports accusing Pragiwaksono of blasphemy, a vaguely defined — but serious — crime in Indonesia, and the comedian was called in for questioning. He was interrogatedon four occasions, for six hours each. Pragiwaksono believes the campaign against him is politically motivated, and that the vice president is behind it.
The comedian’s case is ongoing, and the police are continuing to question people. If the state decides to officially charge him with blasphemy, Pragiwaksono could go to trial. In the worst-case scenario, he could face a five-year prison sentence.
Pragiwaksono has already felt the consequences of the investigation. Now, when he performs in Indonesia, he must get his material approved by the government. “I’m required to send a transcript of my jokes to the police,” he says. Only after the cops sign off on his punchlines will they provide a permit for the event.
It hasn’t only affected Pragiwaksono; it has transformed the country’s comedy landscape: Other comedians, too, are forced to seek government approval of their material before they can perform. “I was hanging out with a bunch of prominent Indonesian comedians, and they were like, ‘This never happened before. This is after the “Mens Rea” case,’” Pragiwaksono says.
Somehow, as he speaks in a tent somewhere in the great Indonesian outdoors, he doesn’t seem worried.
“I have a strong feeling that these politicians don’t want to do anything to me. I don’t think it’s going to get to the point where I’m sent to prison. It’s going to make the government look bad,” he says. He thinks by distracting him with legal drama, the government is simply trying to stifle him from performing jokes at its expense. “I hope I’m right.”