Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre

Aziz Ansari profiled in Nylon Guys

Nylon Guys March 2010
Park Life
by Jessica Hundley
photographed by Brantley Gutierrez

Aziz Ansari's understated brand of humor has opened the doors of NBC and now, Apatow Towers

When he's not performing stand-up, starring in NBC's Parks & Recreation, making movies with Judd Apatow, or writing, producing, and starring in the comedy collective Human Giant, Aziz Ansari is... eating.

"I'm really into food," he admits, "I basically used my last stand-up tour as a way to eat everything I could, everywhere I went. It was more a food tour than a comedy tour. I ate at every great place I had heard or read about. Burgers, sushi, tacos, barbeque..."

At this moment, a waitress interrupts to ask for his order. He shakes his head and claims he's not hungry -- such is the strange irony of Ansari. In a world where successful comics are generally a depressed and anti-social bunch, Ansari is pleasantly good humored and easygoing. In an industry that usually calls for dog-eat-dog ambition and the selling of souls, Ansari is loyal to his friends and funny, without being a jerk. Miraculously, his laid-back attitute toward his own success manages to seem matter-of-fact, rather than fake.

"People think everything happened all at once, but I've actually been doing this for eight years," he explains. "I was 18 when I started. I was hanging out with some friends, and they asked if I had tried stand-up before. I hadn't, but I thought, What the hell? So I went to an open mic night, and I liked it. I mean, it was terrifying the first time, but it was fun. And people laughed."

Soon after that, Ansari formed the comedy team Human Giant with Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, and director Jason Woliner. The groups's popular live shows eventually lead to a deal with MTV... which led to a part in Apatow's Funny People... which led to an offer to star as a series regular in Parks & Recreation. This January, Ansari appeared in an hour-long stand-up DVD entitled Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening. Oh yeah, and he has a three-picture deal with Apatow.

"Jason Woliner and I pitched Judd an idea, and he was like, 'Why don't you guys work on a few films, instead of just one?'" says Ansari, with a shrug. "And he's a smart guy, so we said, 'Sure.'"

The deal comes on the heels of the Internet release of the Raaaaaaaandy documentary, directed by Woliner and starring Ansari -- based on the profane and swaggering comedian he created for Funny People. "I thought it would be funny to make fun of the kind of crass, egotist comics that just talk about getting laid and making money," says Ansari of Randy. "I just tried to imagine if, like, Soulja Boy was a comic.... And I wasn't trying to mock Dane Cook, if that's what you're thinking."

Cook satire aside, Ansari, in portraying a comedian with a bloated ego and knack for obscenity, does a pretty good job of skewering exactly the kind of comedy he isn't about.

"I don't know. I guess I just don't think a lot of that kind of humor is funny. For me, it's more about taking a joke and really refining it. After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times, and then one night it'll flop. And that's when I take a really hard look at myself and say, 'Well, that crowd is obviously wrong. That crowd has absolutely no idea what it's talking about.'"