Utkarsh Ambudkar

Utkarsh Ambudkar, born December 8, 1983, in Baltimore, Maryland, is an American actor, rapper, and singer who also performs under the stage name UTK the INC. He grew up in Gaithersburg, Maryland, where his parents, both research scientists at the National Institutes of Health, had emigrated from India in the 1980s. His father is Marathi and his mother is Tamil, and through his mother he is a descendant of the lawyer and jurist Sir Vembakkam Bhashyam Aiyangar. Ambudkar attended Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, where he performed in comedy roles, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 2004.

Ambudkar made his Broadway debut on October 2, 2019, as a member of Freestyle Love Supreme, Lin-Manuel Miranda's improvisational hip-hop show, a group he had been part of since 2005 under his stage name UTK the INC. Prior to the Broadway run, the group had participated in a limited television series for Pivot in 2014. His involvement with the show extended through 2021. Earlier in his career, Ambudkar originated the role of Aaron Burr in the developmental readings of Hamilton, and he has publicly stated that struggles with alcohol and marijuana use at the time contributed to his departure from that project. He was also a former VJ for MTV Desi and a member of the musical group The Beatards, and has released several solo projects including The Gold Tusk EP in 2006, Members Only EP in 2012, and the singles Vanity and Petty in 2019.

His film career includes appearances in Pitch Perfect (2012), in which he played the character Donald, Game Over, Man! (2018), Blindspotting (2018), Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019), in which he played Jern, The Broken Hearts Gallery (2020), Free Guy (2021), Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021), and World's Best (2023). He also appeared in Disney's Godmothered (2020) and filmed a deleted scene as a con artist named Skatch in the 2020 live-action remake of Mulan.

On television, Ambudkar has had recurring roles on The Mindy Project, White Famous, and Brockmire, where he played a character named Raj. He voiced the mongoose Chikku in the Disney Junior animated series Mira, Royal Detective beginning in 2020, and has appeared in Never Have I Ever and The Muppets. He starred in the Hulu limited series The Dropout in 2022 and has been a cast member of the CBS supernatural sitcom Ghosts since 2021. He also appeared in sketch comedy content for CollegeHumor and Key & Peele on YouTube, and participated in the Dungeons & Dragons actual play web series Force Grey: Giant Hunters (2016) and Force Grey: Lost City of Omu (2017), playing a rogue named Hitch under Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer. In 2023, he appeared as a guest player in Mercer's Critical Role third campaign as the sorcerer Bor'Dor.

Ambudkar married his wife Naomi in 2019 and has three children. In a 2023 interview, he disclosed that he had been sober for eight and a half years, having struggled with alcoholism in the early 2010s.