Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
AASIF MANDVIComedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.
AASIF MANDVIThe experience of being on a show that is very much in the center of popular culture is exciting. You really feel like you’re reaching people.
AASIF MANDVIWe are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
AASIF MANDVIWhen I was 11 my friend’s mom made a peanut butter sandwich. I ate the sandwich and was like, ‘I’m never eating anything else again.’ And I still eat peanut butter every day. I would put peanut butter on a steak.
AASIF MANDVIBecause to Americans, Chechnya might as well be a suburb of Narnia.
AASIF MANDVINorth Carolina precinct chairman and GOP executive committee member Don Yelton thinks his state’s new voting restrictions are just fine.
AASIF MANDVIIf you don’t acknowledge differences, it’s as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone.
AASIF MANDVIIt is ironic that it doesn’t matter how successful I am in any other capacity. Ultimately, my parents marker is do you have a wife? And do you have children?
AASIF MANDVII 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.
AASIF MANDVIIn America, you have this kind of individualism and in the West, essentially, you have this individualism – this idea of my own personal fulfillment.
AASIF MANDVIYou do find a lot of your time in the West kind of searching for your place in the world – your voice, your identity, like, who am I? Like, what is my reason for being here, you know? And in that same way who am I to be partnered with, you know?
AASIF MANDVII mean, but obviously, in people’s eyes, it still – it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they’re white?
AASIF MANDVIThe 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.
AASIF MANDVII 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.
AASIF MANDVINow the bigots have to get creative. Good luck coming up with slurs for Chechens. Go back where you came from, Ushanka head.
AASIF MANDVIIn Britain, you never get away from the fact that you’re a foreigner. In the U.S., the view is it doesn’t matter where you come from.
AASIF MANDVI