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.
AASIF MANDVIThis was in the ’70s and there was a lot of racism towards South Asians and there was a lot of hazing and bullying and racism that really probably shaped me in some way in terms of, like, wanting to get out of there.
More Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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Voter fraud does just barely exist, while racism, according to the Supreme Court, is a thing of the past.
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I know the Gospel according to Mark better than I know any sura in the Quran.
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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.
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I think I discovered my first, you know, my first image of a naked woman was sort of sneaking a peek at one of those magazines that was in my dad’s store.
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Paki- bashing was kind of this term that was used in general to beat up anyone that was from the Indian subcontinent.
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Of course the law’s not racist.
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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!
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In 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.
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If you choose to be a Muslim then you believe that it is on some level wrong to show the image of the Prophet Muhammad.
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When you’re brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.
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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.
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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.
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Statistically there is enough voter fraud to sway zero elections.
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I’ve always said I’m the worst representative of Muslim-Americans that’s ever existed, because I’ve been inside more bars than mosques.
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Samantha Bee said to me when I first started on the “Daily Show”, she was like no – there is no – the only way you’ll learn this job is by doing this job.
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