Jay Chandrasekhar

Jay Chandrasekhar
Born	Jayanth Jambulingam Chandrasekhar
Birthplace	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, comedian
Known for	Broken Lizard, Super Troopers
Education	Colgate University
Children	3

Jayanth Jambulingam Chandrasekhar, known professionally as Jay Chandrasekhar, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and comedian born in Chicago, Illinois. He is a founding member of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, whose feature films — including Super Troopers (2001), Club Dread (2004), Beerfest (2006), and Super Troopers 2 (2018) — he has directed and appeared in. Outside of Broken Lizard, Chandrasekhar directed the 2005 studio comedy The Dukes of Hazzard and has worked prolifically as a television director since the early 2000s, helming episodes of series including Community, The Goldbergs, Arrested Development, and Psych. Chandrasekhar began his career in independent film with the Broken Lizard debut Puddle Cruiser, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996.

Early Life

Chandrasekhar was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family of Indian origin. His given name is Jayanth Jambulingam Chandrasekhar; he later adopted the shortened form "Jay" for professional use. He has spoken in interviews about growing up as the child of Indian immigrants in the American Midwest and the influence that experience had on his comedic sensibility, particularly in negotiating cultural expectations around career choices.

Chandrasekhar is a cousin of the actor Sendhil Ramamurthy, best known for his work on the television series Heroes.

Education

Chandrasekhar attended Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, where he studied in the early 1990s. It was at Colgate that he met the four other future members of the sketch comedy group Broken Lizard — Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. The group began performing sketch comedy together as undergraduates and continued after graduation, first performing at colleges and comedy clubs before turning to filmmaking. Chandrasekhar has credited his time at Colgate with providing both the creative partnerships and the initial audience that shaped his early comedic voice.

Career

Broken Lizard and early films

After leaving Colgate, Chandrasekhar and his fellow Broken Lizard members relocated to New York City, where they continued to perform live sketch comedy and began developing their first feature film. That project, Puddle Cruiser, was written by the group, directed by Chandrasekhar, and starred all five members. The film premiered in competition at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, receiving a mixed but attention-getting review in Variety that highlighted the ensemble's comic chemistry.

Broken Lizard followed Puddle Cruiser with Super Troopers, a comedy about a group of Vermont state troopers whose petty rivalries with local police give way to a larger conspiracy. Chandrasekhar directed and co-wrote the film with the rest of the troupe and appeared in the role of Officer Arcot "Thorny" Ramathorn. Produced independently on a modest budget, Super Troopers was acquired by Fox Searchlight Pictures out of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and became a sleeper hit that developed into a lasting cult favorite on home video.

Chandrasekhar next directed the Broken Lizard horror-comedy Club Dread (2004), set at a Caribbean island resort, and the beer-drinking-competition comedy Beerfest (2006), both of which he co-wrote and appeared in. In 2012, he directed and starred in the Broken Lizard comedy The Babymakers.

The Dukes of Hazzard and studio work

In 2005, Chandrasekhar directed the studio feature The Dukes of Hazzard, a big-screen adaptation of the 1979–1985 CBS television series, for Warner Bros. The film starred Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, and Burt Reynolds. Chandrasekhar described the project as a departure from the smaller-scale Broken Lizard films, giving him experience directing a large studio production with major stars and extensive stunt work. He discussed the transition to studio filmmaking in interviews around the release, noting both the greater resources and the constraints that came with an established property.

Chandrasekhar has continued to be attached to studio and independent film projects in the years since. He was reported by The Hollywood Reporter to be directing the family comedy Easter Sunday for Amblin Entertainment. He has also spoken publicly about pitching projects to Marvel Studios.

Super Troopers 2 and Super Troopers 3

In 2018, Chandrasekhar directed Super Troopers 2, a sequel to the 2001 original. The film was financed in part through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that drew significant attention from fans of the original film. All five members of Broken Lizard returned to co-write and star, with Chandrasekhar again playing Thorny.

Chandrasekhar returned to the franchise with Super Troopers 3, which he directed and in which the full Broken Lizard cast — Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske — reprised their roles. The film centers on the wedding between Heffernan's character, Farva, and the sister of Chandrasekhar's character, Thorny, incorporating a Bollywood-styled Indian wedding as a central set piece.

Chandrasekhar has also signed on to direct Opposites Attract, a comedy from Bold Films written by Dan Ewen.

Television directing

Alongside his film work, Chandrasekhar has built an extensive television directing career beginning in the early 2000s. He directed multiple episodes of the NBC sitcom Community and the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, as well as episodes of Arrested Development, Psych, Happy Endings, Chuck, Undateable, New Girl, and Up All Night, among many other comedy series.

Chandrasekhar's role as a director on Community brought him back into public discussion in late 2025, when he spoke publicly about a 2012 on-set incident involving cast member Chevy Chase. In interviews tied to a CNN documentary about Chase, Chandrasekhar recalled that Chase had what he described as a "full meltdown" on set after news reports emerged that Chase had used a racial slur during a table read. Chandrasekhar recounted Chase telling him, "My career is ruined."

Stand-up and other work

Chandrasekhar has performed stand-up comedy in addition to his film and television work, appearing at venues such as the Arlington Cinema Drafthouse and touring both independently and in connection with Broken Lizard film releases. He is the author of a memoir released in 2015 through Amazon Publishing that recounts his experiences making Super Troopers and working with Broken Lizard.

Personal Life

Chandrasekhar is married and has three children. In interviews, he has spoken about balancing his television directing schedule with family life in Los Angeles. He is a cousin of actor Sendhil Ramamurthy.

Chandrasekhar has occasionally addressed his identity as a South Asian American filmmaker in interviews, noting the relative scarcity of Indian American directors in mainstream Hollywood comedy when he began his career and discussing the ways in which his heritage has surfaced in his work, including the Indian wedding setting central to Super Troopers 3.

Recognition

Chandrasekhar's most enduring recognition comes from Super Troopers, which developed into a widely cited cult comedy following its 2001 theatrical release and subsequent home-video success. Rolling Stone devoted a 2014 oral history to the film, tracing its production and lasting influence on comedy audiences. The Washington Post similarly highlighted the film's continuing cultural footprint in coverage of Chandrasekhar's live appearances.

Puddle Cruiser was selected for competition at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival, marking Broken Lizard's arrival in the independent film scene, and Super Troopers was acquired at Sundance in 2001.

Chandrasekhar is catalogued in international authority files including the Virtual International Authority File, the German National Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the KB National Library of the Netherlands, and ISNI, reflecting the international distribution and cataloguing of his film and print work.

Legacy

Chandrasekhar's principal cultural contribution has been as the director and co-writer of Super Troopers, a film that grew from a modest independent release into a defining ensemble comedy of the early 2000s. The film's catchphrases, extended improvisational scenes, and stoner-adjacent tone helped establish a template that Rolling Stone's 2014 oral history credited with influencing a subsequent generation of American comedy filmmakers. The film's endurance was reflected in the crowdfunding success of Super Troopers 2 more than a decade and a half after the original's release, and in the eventual production of Super Troopers 3.

As a television director, Chandrasekhar has been a consistent presence in the American single-camera comedy landscape since the early 2000s, contributing episodes to a substantial number of the genre's notable series, including Arrested Development, Community, Psych, Happy Endings, and The Goldbergs. His willingness to alternate between studio filmmaking, independent Broken Lizard projects, and prolific episodic television has made him one of the more visible working directors of American ensemble comedy of his era.

Chandrasekhar's public profile as one of the few Indian American directors working consistently in mainstream Hollywood comedy has also been noted in South Asian and diaspora press coverage throughout his career, from early interviews in Khabar and Rediff to more recent coverage in IndiaWest and BollySpice surrounding Super Troopers 3.