Aasif Mandvi
Aasif Mandvi
Aasif Hakim Mandviwala, known professionally as Aasif Mandvi, is an Indian-American actor and comedian. He began appearing as an occasional contributing correspondent on The Daily Show on August 9, 2006. On March 12, 2007, he was promoted to a regular correspondent. He is the lead actor, co-writer and producer of the web series Halal In The Family which premiered on "Funny or Die" in 2015 and an actor, writer and co-producer of the HBO comedy series The Brink. Mandvi is...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth5 March 1966
CountryIndia
children character people
People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.
new-york thinking america
In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food... they've never even tasted it!
acting done stuff
I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it's been something that I've always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
past racism voter-fraud
Voter fraud does just barely exist, while racism, according to the Supreme Court, is a thing of the past.
jobs artist mirrors
An artist's job is simply to take the mirror in front of your face and hold it there. It's not to give you any answers. It is simply to take that mirror and point it at you.
differences stereotype reducing
If you don't acknowledge differences, it's as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
war hate believe
I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad - I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is.
becomes crossing house line muslims stop stopping talk
You can talk about and think about Muslims as you want, but you can't stop Muslims from building a mosque. You can hate Muslims from the comfort of your house or publicly, but when that becomes stopping Muslims from building a mosque or worshipping, then we are crossing the line into something else.
brown english indian kid stuff
When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.
audition east felt hire middle needed people somebody
They wanted to audition people for the Middle East correspondent on 'The Daily Show.' They wanted to hire somebody ethnic for that slot. Helms had left, Cordry had left, and they felt that they needed an ethnic face. So, I went in and auditioned, and I got the job.
acting great material pleasure raw work written
The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
began east front green hot longer middle pretending realize report screen somewhere spent spots standing time war zones
The longer I spent time on 'The Daily Show,' standing in front of a green screen pretending to report from war zones and hot spots around the world - most often from somewhere in the Middle East - the more I began to realize that 'The Daily Show' was radicalizing me.
average deals dollar far hollywood hope indian movies people resonates
The average Indian doesn't care about Hollywood movies because they have far too many movies of their own to watch, to miss, and I hope a story like 'Million Dollar Arm,' that is actually about India and deals with these two Indian kids, resonates over there and makes people want to go and see the movie.
associate family god grown pray religion
Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it's culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with.