Sofia May on the origins of her Edinburgh Fringe show

In this new series for 2026, comedians heading to the Edinburgh Fringe reveal the stories behind their show. We start with American comedian Sofia May, speaking about her time as a member of the inner circle of a Buddhist cult, inspiring her solo hour The Buddha Wears Prada.

For seven years, I was part of an off-the-grid community in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, working as the assistant to an impossibly chic and diabolical female Buddhist cult leader. 

I have always wanted to write a comedy show about this period of my life, but it is such an ambitious topic that I haven't known how to get my head around

it – like biting into a giant sandwich, stacked intimidatingly high with roast beef. I was so thoroughly traumatised by my time in this community that I have been scarcely able to speak of it in therapy.

I couldn't go anywhere near the pain of it or the shame of it – that is, until autumn 2024, when Be Scofield (the journalist responsible for exposing the Love Has Won cult and the UK doomsday cult Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, among many others) contacted me to write an exposé about my former cult. 

I had been sitting on my story for a decade, and this opportunity put me in touch with my sacred desire to blab. And so I did. In the course of nine hours of phone calls, I told her the harrowing story of what I had experienced. I was featured as one of the key witnesses in the exposé, the only survivor to use their name, and also became the whistleblower of this cult.

Coming forward helped me find my voice, and since then, I haven't been able to shut the fuck up. Not shutting the fuck up has led to what I like to call ‘a whistle-blowing rampage. Since the publication of Scofield’s exposé, Secrets Of Shambhala: Feeding Tsultrim Allione's Demons in September last year, I have shared my story on the most prestigious cult platforms (A Little Bit Culty, Cults to Consciousness), radio programmes (Mystic Pete KXLU Los Angeles), and am set to speak on more podcasts and seminars –  that is to say, I am just getting started.

When the exposé came out, as a survivor, it was clear that there was an urgency to strike while the iron was hot and use my voice to put eyes on this community (which is still active), and as a comedian, I thought: what better way to do this than exposing my cult leader through comedy? 

What could take away the power of a malignant narcissist more effectively than making her the butt of a thousand jokes? What could wound her inflated ego more thoroughly than having rooms full of people laughing at her malice?

At the inception of my show, The Buddha Wears Prada, the healing had only just begun. Speaking up on these major platforms gave me back the voice that the leader had so effectively taken away. It gave me the power to take the narrative out of her hands and into mine, to tell it accurately – to tell the version that gives the survivors back our humanity. 

But even more compelling was the healing that came from being put to the task of finding the funny in these devastating stories, and finding it fast. I had less than a year to break through the emotional permafrost and debut a hilarious hour celebrating my emancipation. Likewise, it would have to be an hour so funny and revealing that it would leave the cult reeling from the exposure as they monitor me from afar –which I have on good authority that they are doing; struggling to do so effectively on the internet, Boomers that they also are.

This undertaking has been incredibly joyful. I have had the pleasure of looking into places that once filled me with shame, shining a light into them and revealing what really lives within those dark corners, which is absolute absurdity. 

The absurdity of a cult leader's self-aggrandising narrative juxtaposed with discernment and sanity are the exact variables that create and break tension. They are the perfect comedic ingredients.

What has come out of this process is an accelerated form of healing, levity in the place of heaviness, and far more jokes about this leader and her community than I can fit into an hour, which begs the possibility of a sequel.

With each bit, I find that the story gets rewritten and reinscribed as my absurd version of the narrative, instead of her deathly devaluing one. With every punchline written, I have pulled myself out from under the thumb of this woman, and put my thumb on top of hers, as though soldiers in a cosmic thumb war.

To see this show is to witness and be a part of something truly great and quite possibly historic. You'll be enjoying pure knock-out stand-up about a highly unusual, absolutely gripping real-life experience, and also engaging in a brazen act of defiance against the smug reign of an active Buddhist cult. 

Meanwhile, while you're watching the show, the cult will be watching all of us, seething in the Colorado Rockies about their lack of control over the situation. 

If you're debating what to do at the Edinburgh Fringe, ask yourself: what better way to spend an afternoon at the Fringe than in hysterics, joyfully contributing to the narcissistic collapse of an impossibly glamorous, absolutely diabolical Buddhist cult leader? See you at 3:15pm, at The Dragonfly.

• Sofia May: The Buddha Wears Prada is on at Laughing Horse @ Dragonfly at 3.15pm from August 6 (not Mondays) 

Published: 20 Jul 2026