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
America undermines its own ideals when it ignores the very values it is promoting around the world. You cannot ask other people in the world to follow the law and act responsibly if we don't do the same ... and being afraid is not an excuse.
I think you had the GOP down there in North Carolina reaching out to African-American voters and this guy coming on television and using the N-word and saying what Don Yelton said.
When my family decided to leave England I could not have been happier. I was sort of like - America seemed like the land of opportunity and, you know, it was Hollywood to me.
I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane.
There's this existential crisis in America and in the West of, like - who am I? - based on this searching for individual fulfillment, which you don't necessarily have in the East in the same way because you're kind of told what to do. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying that's just, like, the reality.
So I had this completely unrealistic idea of what America was — but I wanted to be there.
In America, you have this kind of individualism and in the West, essentially, you have this individualism - this idea of my own personal fulfillment.
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!
I don't want to tell people what they should think.
I think politicians and comedians have a lot in common. One is a group of approval-seeking narcissists who will say and do anything to be liked ... and comedians are always talking about politics.
The idea that I had anything to do with speaking about Islam or about the Muslim world was just absurd to my family. ... I hadn't been to the mosque in like 10 years.
My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up.
Of course the law's not racist.
Statistically there is enough voter fraud to sway zero elections.