Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansariis an American actor and comedian. He is known for his roles as Tom Haverford on the NBC series Parks and Recreationand as Dev Shah on the Netflix series Master of None, which debuted in 2015 and Ansari created, writes, and stars in. The New York Times called the latter show "the year's best comedy straight out of the gate"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth23 February 1983
CityColumbia, SC
CountryUnited States of America
You should really treat stand-up like you would a play. It's a one-man play.
I never had the desire to be a professional Twitterer. Every now and then something dumb pops into my head and I'll tweet it. I don't feel any obligation to respond to everyone. Not that I don't appreciate people sending me messages on there, but there are too many. Responding to everyone would take away time for all the stuff I'm actually in the business for [stand-up or scripts].
Most of my teachers when I grew up were like older white women. So, I couldn't really channel them.
I think when people talk about improvising it turns into this silly thing like, "Oh there's like a hula hoop there and I'm like 'Oh what's going on here? Is this a really big ring?'"
Every time I've done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there's always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they're just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.
I can't think of any bank robbery comedy where it's about two normal guys. It's kind of like Superbad meets Heat, which is a cool combo, and it's just fun doing a normal guy that's robbing a bank.
I write characters that are based on elements of people I know and experiences I've really had.
Instead of yelling your opinion, or telling people to shut up, or engaging in this clickbait-internet culture, have a dialogue with someone and ask people questions and listen to what they have to say.
I prefer being totally sober myself.
It can take a few months to get a new 10 minutes. Usually it takes like 10 times of repeatedly trying different variations of a joke until I land on one I think is really good.
I always have my setlist planned out, but the best moments are when the energy of the crowd just gets your mind working and you are able to come up with new tags for jokes and just riff off things in the room.
I talk about stuff like my Blackberry, Lost, the internet, music, etc. so I guess that leads to the "nerd" moniker. But I don't get it that much to be honest. I guess its better than being labeled a "racist" comedian.
Once you become a comedian, you accept that people are just going to yell stuff at you.
Come cook food with me and do nothing.