Utkarsh Ambudkar

Utkarsh Ambudkar ( ; born December 8, 1983), also known by his stage name UTK the INC, is an American actor, rapper, and singer. He is known for his film roles including Pitch Perfect, Game Over, Man! (2018), Blindspotting (2018), Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019), The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020), Free Guy (2021), Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021), and World's Best (2023). His television roles include The Mindy Project, White Famous, Never Have I Ever, Mira, Royal Detective, and the male lead role in Ghosts. He also appeared in the Hulu limited series The Dropout (2022).

He made his Broadway debut in Lin-Manuel Miranda's improvisational hip-hop show Freestyle Love Supreme in 2019.

Early life Utkarsh Ambudkar was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 8, 1983, into an Indian family to a Marathi father and a Tamil mother. He grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where his parents, who had emigrated from India in the 1980s, were research scientists at the National Institutes of Health. He starred in comedy roles at Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, and he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 2004.

Through his mother, Ambudkar is a descendant of the lawyer and jurist Sir Vembakkam Bhashyam Aiyangar.

Career Ambudkar is a former VJ for MTV Desi. He appeared in the comedy film Pitch Perfect, as the character Donald, and in the television shows The Mindy Project and The Muppets. He was set to star in the Fox series Eat, Pray, Thug, but the show was not picked up. Ambudkar originated the role of Aaron Burr in the developmental readings of Hamilton. He formerly played Raj on the sitcom Brockmire. He played Skatch, a con artist, in a deleted scene of the 2020 Disney live-action remake of Mulan. That same year, he appeared in Disney's Godmothered, and then in the 2021 action comedy Free Guy. In 2020, Ambudkar debuted as the mongoose Chikku in the Disney Junior animated series Mira, Royal Detective. He is currently starring in the CBS supernatural sitcom Ghosts (2021).

He was a member of the musical group "The Beatards." and made his Broadway debut in the group's self-titled show on October 2, 2019.

Ambudkar has appeared in several Youtube sketch comedy skits including the comedy groups CollegeHumor and Key & Peele. Ambudkar starred in Force Grey: Giant Hunters (2016) and Force Grey: Lost City of Omu (2017), a Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series with Matthew Mercer as the Dungeon Master, where he played the character Hitch, a rogue with a nefarious past.

Personal life Ambudkar married his wife Naomi in 2019 and has three children. He told The New York Times in 2019: "It was ego, it was being a daily marijuana user, it was partying at night, it was being preoccupied, growing up as a brown person, feeling unattractive, and seeking validation of the opposite sex to sort of fill a hole, my self-worth." Vanity (2019) Petty'' (2019)

Filmography

Film

Television

Web

Theatre Year Title Role Venue 2004 History of the Word Ali Crossroads Theatre 2005 The Me Nobody Knows Performer Staged Reading, Vineyard Theatre The Snow Queen Kay Urban Stages 2007 History of the Word Ali Washington Irving High School LaGuardia Performing Arts Center 2008 Rafta, Rafta... Etash Tailor Acorn Theater/The New Group, Off-Broadway Animals Out of Paper Suresh McGinn/Cazale Theatre, Off-Broadway 2009 Dov and Ali Ali Cherry Lane Theatre, Off-Broadway 2010 The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity Vigneshwar Paduar Second Stage Theatre, Off-Broadway 2012 Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them RahimSecond Stage Theatre, Off-Broadway 2013 Hamilton Aaron Burr Vassar College, Workshop 2019Freestyle Love SupremeHimself Greenwich House Theater, Off-Broadway 2019–20 Booth Theatre, Broadway