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
We are Muslims. My father would pawn off his Muslim in-laws as Hindus just so that he could get free pancakes.
From my parent's generation the idea was not that marriage was about some kind of idealized, romantic love. It was a partnership. It's about creating family. It's about creating offspring.
Indian culture is essentially much more of a we culture. It's a communal culture where you do what's best for the community - you procreate.
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.
You 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?
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.
There's no school that you can go to and learn how to be a "Daily Show" correspondent and how to interview people and, you know, essentially leave your soul outside the door and go in there and kind of, you know, destroy people's lives sometimes.
I came from a very different sort of background and pedigree from the people who were on "The Daily Show". I was an actor. I was sort of - the irony is that I've done as much dramatic work in my career as comedic work and I don't really think of myself as a comedian.
I 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?
I thought [when I was 16] my days were just going to be spent hanging out on a beach and my girlfriend was going to be Miss Teen USA and my best friend will be a dolphin.
The Daily Show writers are incredibly smart and very well plugged-in but occasionally they would need me for certain specific things, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, I completely know how to do that; I can solve that problem,and then I'd be like, 'Mom?
Because to Americans, Chechnya might as well be a suburb of Narnia.
I know the Gospel according to Mark better than I know any sura in the Quran.
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.