Early life and education
Soni grew up in New Delhi, India, attending an international school there.1 He immigrated to the United States at age 18 to study business at the University of Southern California.1 He subsequently transitioned to the USC School of Dramatic Arts, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2011,2 where he explored acting through campus productions.
Career
Soni's screen career began with the short film Kaka Nirvana (2010).2 His feature film debut came with the indie science-fiction comedy Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), directed by Colin Trevorrow,3 and he followed that with a lead role in the Amazon Studios original series Betas (2013).1
His first major television recurring role was on the Yahoo! Screen comedy series Other Space (2015), created by Paul Feig, in which he played Captain Stewart Lipinski across all eight episodes of the single-season run.1 That same year he became a series regular on Blunt Talk (2015-2016), the Starz comedy starring Patrick Stewart, appearing in 19 episodes.1
The role of Dopinder in Deadpool (2016) brought Soni to widespread recognition.1 The cheerful taxi driver who idolizes the title character became a fan favorite, and the role expanded significantly in Deadpool 2 (2018), where Dopinder becomes an active participant in the action. Soni reprised the character a third time in Deadpool and Wolverine (2024), the MCU crossover event pairing Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman.
From 2019 to 2023, Soni was a main cast member of Miracle Workers, the TBS anthology comedy series created by Simon Rich.1 The show, which reset its premise, setting, and time period each season while retaining much of its core cast, ran for four seasons.
His voice performance as Pavitr Prabhakar, the Mumbai-based Spider-Man, in Sony's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) introduced him to a new generation of fans.1 He is set to reprise the role in Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.
Additional film credits include Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)1 and the lead role in the romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy (2024), directed by his husband Roshan Sethi from a screenplay by Eric Randall.4 In television, he joined the cast of ABC's Abbott Elementary in a recurring capacity in 2024 and directed the episode "Librarian" (Season 3, Episode 7).5
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
In Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, Soni played Bennie, the perennially late delivery driver for Zhu's Authentic Hong Kong Food, the Chinese restaurant directly below the Ghostbusters' eventual firehouse headquarters. Bennie appears as a recurring gag character across multiple sections of the film (Chapters 2, 5, 11, and 16): he delivers regularly to Abby Yates at the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute despite being consistently an hour late on every order and despite Zhu's always skimping on portion sizes. The joke continues even after the Ghostbusters relocate their operation to the building directly above Zhu's: Bennie still arrives an hour late. Three deleted scenes featuring Bennie were included in the home release: "Bennie & Erin," "The Big Test," and "The New Book."
Soni's casting drew directly from his existing working relationship with director Paul Feig. The two had just completed Other Space (2015) together, and several of Soni's Other Space co-stars also appear in Answer the Call: Milana Vayntrub, Neil Casey, and Eugene Cordero.
Personal life
Soni is gay and has spoken publicly about his sexuality.1 He is married to writer-director Roshan Sethi,1 with whom he has collaborated professionally: the couple co-wrote and co-produced the 2021 film 7 Days,6 while Soni starred in Sethi's 2024 directorial project A Nice Indian Boy, written by Eric Randall.4
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Karan Soni," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karan_Soni.
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"Karan Soni," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4175221/.
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"Safety Not Guaranteed," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_Not_Guaranteed.
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"A Nice Indian Boy," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nice_Indian_Boy.
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IMDb, "Abbott Elementary: Librarian (TV Episode 2024)," accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31121829/.
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"7 Days (2021 film)," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Days_(2021_film).
