Aasif Mandvi Quotes
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The 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.
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The average Indian doesn't care about Hollywood movies because they have far too many movies of their own to watch, to miss, and I hope a story like 'Million Dollar Arm,' that is actually about India and deals with these two Indian kids, resonates over there and makes people want to go and see the movie.
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I've actually changed my view of Los Angeles. When I was younger, I hated it, because I thought it was fake and superficial. As I've gotten older, I've found that to be absolutely true, but I don't care.
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When you're brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.
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Traditional television as we have known it will make love to the Internet and have a child. That child will be the future. It's already happening, and it's hot!
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I'm a little bit like a turducken: I'm sort of like an Indian person, wrapped in a British person, wrapped in an American kind of thing.
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People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.
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You can talk about and think about Muslims as you want, but you can't stop Muslims from building a mosque. You can hate Muslims from the comfort of your house or publicly, but when that becomes stopping Muslims from building a mosque or worshipping, then we are crossing the line into something else.
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I was born in India - but never really lived there.
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What's great about 'The Daily Show' is I can use satire and push the envelope. I couldn't do that anywhere else. Even if I was a journalist.
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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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When I got to Florida, I was a British kid, but I was also an Indian kid: a brown kid with an English accent. Talk about being an outsider. And that's become the theme of a lot of the stuff I write about.
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One of the first auditions I had in New York was for a commercial where I had to go in and audition to be a snake charmer... It was either some bank commercial or something where they wanted a guy charming a snake... I remember they wanted to know if I actually knew how to snake charm.
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I always used to watch 'The Daily Show,' and there were all these comedic geniuses there. I didn't know if I was going to be hired full time or not. At the beginning, I was sort of hired as a part time, on and off guy. When I first got hired - it was August 2006 - and I was working on and off, and they'd call me whenever.
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I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.
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I go to Buzzfeed and 'Huff Po,' IMDB, 'Deadline.' And then I just Google myself, like 'Aasif Mandvi in a hat,' and see what comes up.
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I'm free to see things objectively because I don't consider myself American, and I don't consider myself British or Indian. I'm kind of an amalgam or mongrel of a lot of different places and experiences. In a lot of ways it's been a good thing for me. It's enabled me to do what I do on 'The Daily Show.'
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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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Being American and being an outsider at the same time, it's a perspective I often bring to a character.
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The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
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In order to change the conversation about Muslims in American media, we need a diverse, unified movement of people who are willing to take a stand against anti-Muslim bias.
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When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.
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Religion is so much more than the god you pray to. The religion that you associate with, it's culture, it is family, it is background. That is something that I have always grown up with.
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I always focused on being an actor. I did stand-up briefly, but I also did a lot of dramatic work. But since I've been on 'The Daily Show,' people think I'm a comedian. That's not how I see myself.