Transcript of #617 - Aziz Ansari

When I was there, you had to have a knife. One of you has got to take turns carrying it up your rectum.

Wait, it's up your butt?

That's the prison wallet.

You'll never leave home without. You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

I'm Mariana Van Zeller, and after reporting on Black Markets for my emu-winning National Geographic show, Traffic, I'm launching a podcast. Are you getting emotional on me. Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows. The Hidden Third is out now with new episodes every Wednesday.

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There are some new things in the merch shop I want to let you know about. We got the tour merch. If you were unable to come to one of the cities, if you were unable to grab a piece of tour merch then you want to get something, we've put whatever we have remaining there online. We also have some new Bumby that have been restocked, and we've got hoodies coming on those, some camo gang, hitter hunt club, a lot of new items in there. Thank you so much. Some people are getting gifts for their friends or family for Christmas. So thank you for letting us be a part of your holidays. And thanks for supporting the show, theovanStore. Com. Thank you, guys. Today's guest is a stand-up comedian. He's an actor and a filmmaker. He just directed his first film called Good Fortune, which we're going to talk about. And I'm looking forward to getting to meet him, really. We never even known each other. So we're going to do that now. Today's guest is Mr. Aziz Ansari.

I love this. Sweet, man.

I might get a hit of this. What do you drink, man? Do you have a beverage of choice?

It's Espresso and water. Really? I mean, not together, but I drink Espresso a lot and then water. Then if I'm drinking like wine or whatever, a Martini or whatever.

A Martini, huh?

Check, check. You good? Do that around, too. Okay. Yeah.

Do Indian people react well to martinis? Is your family Indian by nature?

Yeah, by nature, they are Indian. Okay. Yeah, my family's from India. I was born in South Carolina.

Yeah.

Wait, are we going now or no?

Yeah, we can be.

Yeah, whatever you're on. Okay, wait. Where are you from? You're from Louisiana.

I'm from Louisiana, yeah.

Okay. Because whenever I hear someone else with a Southern accent, it's almost like when I see someone that's Indian, I'm a little like, Oh, I But we've never really met, I don't think, properly. You were at Chris Rock's birthday party. I saw you there, but that was a crazy thing. I didn't really get to say hi. But do you have that when you hear someone with a Southern accent? Because to me, there's so few people. I don't have one, but I'm from South Carolina. I lost my accent. It comes out when I start talking to other people that have it. Even the guy that picked me up at the airport, he was from Atlanta, and I started and it started seeping in. Yeah. But yours has stayed strong. Mine is gone, but I remember when I met Danny McBride, because there's so few people that have Southern accents that are in our acting Hollywood. That's true. Strange.

I think right before our generation, it was more prevalent.

Before. Well, there was the whole blue collar.

Right. Those guys.

Those guys. They had their run. They all had Southern accents. Larry the cable Yeah, I definitely Southern accent.

Yeah, he's going back on tour I just saw.

Yeah, I remember when I was a kid, I grew up in a small town in South Carolina called Bennettville. There's 8,000 people there. No one ever toured there or anything. I remember some kids went and saw Jeff Foxworthy, and he came to Florence, South Carolina, which is like 45 minutes. I'm like, We saw Jeff Foxworthy. That was the first time I'd ever heard of someone going to a live comedy show.

Oh, wow.

By the way, I'm shivering a little bit because... You I was in Chicago, and I had to get up at 5: 00 in the morning, and you had a cold plunge, and your producer was like, If you want to jump in the cold plunge, and I was like, Are you kidding? Are you serious? Because I'm a little tired, and I didn't really sleep yesterday, and I did it. But I'm a little cold. I'm a little cold. I'm flibbered a little cold. I'm a little cold. I'm a little cold. I'm a little cold.

I'm a little cold. I'm a little cold. It'll rattle you. Yeah, no, I'm glad you got in, dude. Yeah, I got in. I was in there earlier this morning. I get in now because I don't want to. I'm like, Let me go do something that I don't want to do to my day, and I think it adjusts my attitude, which I need a lot. Dude, I just went to University of South Carolina. We met a chauffeur over there. His girlfriend had thrown fettucini, like a hot thing of boiling fettucini on him. What? Yeah, and he had to be like, Dude, it's crazy, bro.

That story took a dark turn really fast. That's the last thing I expected to happen in this guy in the story is boiling fettucini thrown on him.

Bro, 100%. But But he was our-Wait, with the water?

Yeah. Okay, because if it was just a fettucini, that's not too bad. The water in the mix, too, though, that's a crime.

Yeah, it was a crime. His neck was dripping off of him and stuff. He went through a lot. But anyway, met him. He's a chauffeur over there. Stan, he's out of the Bronx originally, but we just had him come in. He was just a unique character. Hey, Trev, will you cut the AC off just in case? I I don't want to fucking lose Aziz.

Am I looking crazy? No, you seem fine. Okay. I didn't know if I was sitting there like that.

But no, I know what you mean. Sometimes if you get that in and that AC's on, it's a lot. Dude, is this true? And thanks so much for coming in today, man.

Oh, man, I really appreciate it. I'm not really super familiar with a lot of podcasts, and I haven't done a big press tour in a long time because the last time I had something come out was during COVID, so that was weird. You didn't really do the normal stuff. And then I've been working on these films for a bit. Before, they were like, Oh, do all these podcasts. I was like, I'm going to listen to episodes. I listened to a couple of years. I listened to the Bernie Sanders one.

Oh, yeah.

Which I really liked and to me, really connected with my film because the stuff you guys were talking about, you're talking about something that I hadn't heard where the number one cause of bankruptcy is medical bills.

Yeah.

My character in the film, you're never really given a clear explanation of what happened in this guy. The guy, he's lost his job, he's sleeping in his car.

Oh, in good fortune, you mean?

Yeah. But it made me think of that, what your conversation with Bernie Sanders, and I was like, Oh, man, this is really in the same realm. I loved your episode with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm always fascinated by Arnold.

Really?

Yeah, because I think he's so smart. Yeah, I don't know why. I think How do you realize the more you're in this business, especially in the movie acting world, to be an actor that's had a few hits, a lot of things have to come together. It's not an accident. You know what I mean? When these guys have this run of It's like, they've got to be really sharp.

Yeah, it was pretty fascinating. I guess we went to his office and there's his Konan thing is in there and the sword.

Wait, did you meet that little donkey he has?

I don't know if the donkey was there. There was some hair on the floor.

That's in his house. This was in his office.

Oh, no, this was his office. Yeah, there was some hair on the floor, but I don't know what it was from, I don't think. Oh, my God. Yeah, there's a donkey. Because I think he's very Dutch like that or something.

Oh, he's veryOh, my God. Yeah, those are mini donkeys.

They look A mix, too.

I met a small donkey in Nashville once. First off, I love Nashville. I go to Zanies a lot when I'm working on sets.

Yeah. Oh, I think I remember. That's the last thing I remember. I remember hearing you came to Zanies and did six or seven nights or something over there.

Yeah. One time, one of my favorite shows, The Power went out, and I had to do the show. The power went out and we were like, What do we do? The staff there was amazing. They immediately brought candles out, and I was yelling my set. Then some guy brought a speaker and a microphone. It was incredible.

Oh, dude, I think it was an article or something about that I even remember. I remember seeing a picture about that, or at least just hearing about it in local lore. One thing about Nashville is, dude, it's a very small city. It's small. It's like people, something happens, you hear about it. It's not like... It just feels like a huge town. How long you lived here? A really big town. I lived here for, I think, almost four years.

Where were you before?

The pandemic. I was in LA. Oh, okay. Yeah, and I moved directly from there because during the pandemic, I remember seeing like, Kid Rocks Bar, and people are having a blast there. And meanwhile, my landlord is making us wear a hazmat suit so we get our fucking mail and check because everybody's all pair and shit out there. And I was like, Fuck this shit. I got to fucking go.

I've always loved Nashville. I did a series for Netflix, and we filmed an episode here, and I always come here for standup. I did the Ryman. I'd never done the Ryman. I'd always done some other theater. I did the Ryman on this tour a few months ago, and that's one of the best places I've ever performed. Yeah, there's that thing. Yeah, that was it. Yes. Isn't that so crazy? Yeah.

A power outage force comedian in a season has already finished his set in the dark Monday night, dude.

That was cool. That was one of those cool moments. That was fun. But when I was here for that trip to get back to the donkeys, my wife, she's Danish and she loves donkeys. There was some fair here, and they had miniature donkeys. Oh, beautiful. We sought them out and we said, What's up to them? One of them, his name was Roger, and he was born October fourth, so Roger 10: 4. We met Roger, and there was another little donkey named Lily, but she was a little big. I don't know if she was a microdonkey. Roger was straight up micro. Lily was a little big. I don't know if she was micro.

At that size, I don't judge their weight, to be honest with them. You know what I'm saying? Because the bodies, there's already a lot going on. I think they're beautiful. I remember I met the world's smallest horse one time.

When When was that and where?

His name was Tom Thumb, and I met him in Alameda, I believe.

How did that intro come about?

Well, people were like, You got to go meet him and shit. I remember I'd been in a bar.

Alameda is where? California?

California, yeah. Okay.

You were doing a show in Alameda, and then you got to meet the smallest horse.

No, we'd been out there for a... I think I had heard about it. I think I'd been in conversations about smaller animals, animalia, generally. The world's The one I met was Tom Thumb. If you can also look up separately on perplexity here, if you can just look up Theovon Tom Thumb. I did a post on it. It was pretty fascinating.

What's perplexity?

Perplexity is like a different AI. For me, I like it because it can help me edit and pull clips out of things. You can put something in it and it'll be like, What clips do you like in this? What do you suggest? That thing. It's like an AI.

It's far beyond Am I?

What?

I don't know any of this stuff.

Dude, what are you talking about? How do your parents feel about that?

That I don't know perplexity?

That you don't know about the AIs.

I mean, I know what it is. I don't really use that stuff much. I don't really use internet or phone or anything very much. I try to stay off.

Yes. Oh, here we go right here. Let's take a video.

I am into this though. Super hero right there.

How long are you going to be here today for? He'll be here all day? How small is he?

. He's alive, too? That would be dark.

You don't know what people are doing, dude. But yeah, so just to let you know, I guess we have a lot of symbiosis there in our love for the small horses.

What are horses and donkeys? What's that? Ask the AI, what is that called? What are that animal? Horses, donkeys, the four-legged, they're similar. There must be some group.

Yeah, what is that called?

The Equus.

Yeah, the Equus. The equine.

The equine.

But dude, when you think that God took all the beauty of a huge horse and put it into a baby Snicker of a horse, a little horse.

Yeah, there's not. Is there any other animals that have minis? Because there's many horses, there's many donkeys. What is it? There's many cows? There are. Oh, wow. Oh, God. That'd be a dark moment. You go to a steakhouse, they're like, just so you know, these are all mini cows. It's still- That's too dark.

I'd have a little. You know what I'm saying?

You probably could only have a little.

That's true, dude.

There's not like a 40-ounce mini-cow steak. That's not happening. It's like it's a one ounce. It's like when you go to a sushi restaurant, they have that one little piece of wagyu. This is from a mini cow. Oh, my God. They're all furry. Maybe I'm going to finish this show and get addicted to the internet because this is pretty fun. I never knew about mini cows. I didn't know. I would have just been wondering about equines, equis.

Well, look, dude, I think you could get your wife one of these. Let me see Miniature horses rarely exceed 34 inches in height. Miniature donkeys also max out at around 34 inches.

There's mini micropigs. Oh, wait, this is a whole list of everything there's many of. There's mini horses, donkeys, pygmy goats. They don't call them microgoats. They I refer to be referred to as pygmy goats. Mini sheep, micropigs. Micropigs, I've heard of.

Imagine a mini sheep, though.

You make a very small sweater.

You're just sitting there. Oh, dude, we got to get some of these animals. But, dude, when I was a kid, they only had big dogs, and then the dogs started getting littler. A lot of this, I think, is crossbreeding and inbreeding. I grew up in a, not an inbreeding district, but I grew up in certainly the stray animal belt and the inbreeding belt. They run across some of the same planes in America. We would see a lot of people start getting smaller over time in the area, and that's when you knew, Okay, people need to start walking farther or driving farther for sex. Because you just knew the inbreeding was heating up. You knew the kettle was getting a little warm. When somebody would have a baby and they could just put it on a key ring or whatever, it was like, That thing's too small. Good to see you, man, because we've never really gotten to talk, and it's good to laugh with somebody.

I love meeting comedians that I haven't met before. I was thinking this the other day. When I was on tour, I'd bring some of the same guys out with me.

Who do you take with you? Sorry to interject.

Will Silvents. Oh, yeah.

He's in the movie, isn't he?

Will is in the movie. Ricky Velez, they came out with me a lot early this year. Then our tour manager, Beth, who I love. Will, especially. Have you ever met Will? Do you know Will at all?

I don't know him, but I recognized him immediately. I know him, but I don't know him well.

The hardest I laugh in my life is after shows, going to dinner with Will because he's just the most ridiculous guy. He's so funny. Just this One of my favorite Will anecdotes, one time I told him, I wanted to send him a playlist of some music. He's like, I don't use Spotify. I was like, What do you use? He goes, I use Amazon Music.

Oh, type shit.

I was like, Why did you use Amazon Music? He's like, Because I like to download the MP3s and burn them on the CDs. I was like, This is such a unique dude.

Yeah, it sounds illegal, but it also sounds like I respect it.

But let's say I love comedians. Comedians are my favorite people.

Well, I think in the end, you have to realize how rare it is that people do it and that we do all have something in common. It used to feel a lot more like that.

Again, it's like the Southern accent. It's like when I see another Indian person, there's something that pulls me towards them. It makes me comfortable.

Yeah, I think some of that's just tribes. There's a little bit of whatever's built into us.

What a specific tribe because most people's worst fear is public speaking, and it's what we do for a living. There's something deep inside that's a bond with all of us. It has to be.

Oh, we're like Satan's mini-donkeys.

Mini-donkeys of self-esteem. Yeah. Mini-self-esteem. That's why we need so much approval with laughter.

It's like if you pet me enough- Micro self-esteem people. If you pet me enough, I'll grow into a regular-size horse.

Yeah. We get enough laughs. We play enough theaters. If you graduate to arenas, then we become full-size people.

This is enough. That's hilarious. It's almost like our Pinocchio story. Yeah, dude, I stayed up watching the movie last night, Good Fortune. It's a new movie. Dude, the amount of turns that started to happen, I'm about, I guess, maybe 45 minutes in. The amount of turns that started to happen in the plot, really were making it heat up.

Oh, well, thank you.

It was cool, dude. And Keanu Reeves, he's like this... He almost reminds me of a surfer dude that won best in show at Westminster type of vibe. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, there's a little bit of California, but he's very sweet, like a little pup.

His posture is so good. It seemed like he would win best in show. It seemed like he had very good posture.

I never noticed his posture.

You didn't?

No. But I remember when we first started screening the movie, as soon as he came up on screen, I could tell there was something like, Whoa, this dude's a movie star. It's not just that he's handsome. There's something There's this other thing that he has, and he's so funny in the movie. I mean, he just kills. By the end of the movie, when I've watched it with crowds, he's just doing the smallest thing. Just kidding. Huge laughs.

You directed and wrote, and you're in it, right? You wrote it, too?

I wrote it.

Dude, that's awesome, bro.

Directed, produced, acted everything. Too much.

You have control issues, you think?

Yeah, a little bit. But in a positive way as well. Seth Rogen's in the movie, and he does his show The Studio, and we've talked about that, about doing everything because he does everything on that. There's something that's streamlined about it. To like, Oh, I had this idea. This is how I'm going to write it. For me, whenever I'm writing something, I have an idea in my head of how I want it to sound and look and everything. Directing is pretty much just conveying that to a group of people to execute it.

Yeah.

If it's all coming from one person, and if you're one of the people acting, it does make things easier in a sense.

Yeah, man. That does make a lot of sense, dude.

Yeah. You have other people like Seth and Quiano who they have iconic voices. So when I'm writing, I have their voice in the head. And then when they're there, they do it even funnier than you think they were going to do it when you had in your head. They add something or they improvise. The goal is really you have You have the version in your head, and then you have this whole crew and cast, and you convey your vision, and then they take that, and then they give you something else that's something from them, and it becomes better than you thought.

How long was you guys to shoot for?

Well, it was a little weird because we shot one or two days, and then the writer strike happened. We have to stop for a few months. No. Yeah. Then we came back, and this sounds crazy when I'm saying it out loud. We came back after the writer strike, which was like, I don't know, seven months or something. It was a while.

Were people pregnant and stuff? Was it different?

No, no one got pregnant. No, everyone was still the same.

Oh, thank God.

We shot for a couple of days, and then Keanu broke his knee. He broke his kneecap on our second or third day back. What was he doing? I mean, it sounds insane, as I'm saying it out loud, because this guy has done all the Matrix movies, all the John Wick movies, never got hurt. We filmed a scene in a cold plunge, and he was going back to his dressing room. He was all wrapped up in a robe and everything, and he tripped on a rug and fell on his knee and broke his kneecap. They got pictures of him in the crutches here on perplexity.

No, he broke his freaking kneecap. When you guys right there, could you hear it?

No, it was in his dressing room. I just heard someone on the walk, he's like, I'm on down.

He went through it alone.

Yeah, he fell down. Then they were He's hurt. Then he came down. He was ready to film right away. His knee was bleeding like crazy. We're like, Hey, man, maybe you should go to a doctor. He was like, No, let's shoot. He loves shooting. He just wants to shoot. But anyway, we could film most of his stuff. He had a knee brace that we edited out with VFX.

He didn't get that stupid one with the wheels on it.

No, he didn't have the wheels. I just mean to call it stupid, man. That's what people got to use.

But, dude, I saw some drunk lady and her husband, they were going down Broadway in Nashville.

I know the thing you're talking about. It's like this thing.

It's like a mini scooter.

My friend broke Tori's Achilles heel, and he had to use that for a while.

Yeah, it's like the X games of being crippled or whatever.

It's a little weird. Yeah, it seems a little silly. But he didn't have one of those. He just had a big knee brace. But we had these scenes where he had... Most of the stuff, we could figure it out, but there was a couple of scenes where we needed him to dance. There's a thing where he starts dancing Kumbia, and we were like, Quiana, we can't shoot the Kumbia stuff. We came back after his leg healed and shot a few more days. But it was like a 30-day shoot.

Oh, wow. It's fast. That's a lot of work.

Yeah, that's not too much, but it's not too little. Yeah.

David Spade and I made a movie, and I can't talk about it anymore on here because we've talked about it a lot.

How many days?

23 days.

That's pretty tight. I don't know the script or anything, but 23, that's a lot of work.

But over 30, yeah, we probably had a few days off in between. But it was a lot. It was like the fires that happened. We had to move. Oh, God. Then one scene that just happens to be fire in, and you're like, Okay, well, this has to be part of it. Because you've already set up for the day and whatever the space is going to be. One day it's crazy winds. The winds were like 45 miles an hour. I remember that.

I was in LA right during the fires. I remember the day before, there was a crazy wind.

I was like, What's happening? Okay, so we're talking about kites. We wrote that in the script. Yeah, we should get some kites.

You wrote it in afterwards.

Yeah, just to add like, yeah, maybe we'll get some kites after. We threw in a line. It's like just trying to make things make sense because you're already set up. Everybody's already driven there. The people are there. There's a lady standing there with makeup. You know what I'm saying? People have washed their bodies and gotten in their vehicles and gotten over there. People have put on deuterant. People have put on clean panties and men's panties or whatever they're called, men's underwear.

They put on their undergarments and they showed up. It's a lot of people. It's crazy because You write these random things, and then all these people get to work to do it, and it's some silly joke about a pillowcase or whatever. Which pillowcase do you want to use? Ricky's a bitch or whatever. Yeah.

Sometimes it's something as dumb as that. All these people will drive to one place just so somebody can be like, Ricky's a bitch. You're like, Okay, that's lunch. You're like, That fucking took four hours? God, and Ricky's not even a bitch anymore. He's had a surgery by the end of the day. You know what I'm saying? So everything's changed.

It blows my mind that Because it's like, stand up, you do these things and you're just on a mic and there's people that are listening. But when you write a joke for a movie, there's all these trucks, everybody's showed up. It really makes you pause for a second. I don't know if you had this feeling where you're like, Oh, man, this is a lot of hope. I hope this is worth it for these people.

Oh, yeah. I remember the first day we got to set, I was like, Holy shit. I thought this had just been a bunch of emails. It was all the emails that in real life. There was trailers. There was some guy got electrocuted. But it was everything. You were like, People are acting. There's some guy practicing his things. They're firing an extra. All the shit was going on? Some guys just had bought the wrong peanut. Just all the shit's happening. There's no coffee. There was always no coffee when I got over there. It's fine. But it was just fascinating to see it happen. It's It's one of those things it has to… It's so expensive to do that you have to get it done on that day. It's like whatever elements come, if somebody breaks their leg, if somebody goes missing for an hour, you have to shoot around. It's just all these little things that go on.

I was telling someone, because people always ask me, what's the difference between doing stand-up and doing a film? To me, doing stand-up, it's like you're running around a track and you go, Hey, I'm ready to go. Then you go to all these cities and you run around the track and you're done. A movie is like, you have to go to these people and go, Hey, I want to climb this mountain. Can you give me money to climb this mountain? They're like, Let me see your plan, which is like your script. They're like, Well, we can give you this much. Oh, that's not really enough supplies. Then they're like, Well, can Brad Pitt climb the mountain with you? Can you get these other famous? Then if you're lucky enough to even get to start climbing the mountain, then people just start throwing boulders at you. Hey, here's the writer's You're like, Hey, there's the fires in LA. Oh, wait, Quiano broke his kneecap. It is aYeah, there's a positive blood test. You're like, Oh, that's rough. It's all just... You're just trying to avoid all these different disasters. If you're lucky, you make it to the top.

But it's so much harder. There's so much more that's out of your control. Standup is soIn your control. Yeah, there's something so pure and beautiful about standup. I like doing both, but There is something so pure and beautiful about standup where it's just literally a person talking in the microphone. It's such a pure and direct art form. And filmmaking, there's so many other things that are out of your control, and it's a lot more complex, but it's rewarding in its own way. I think about how I'm working on other scripts now, and I'll have some joke, and it'll be like, Well, this will be maybe years from now before I'll see this joke in a theater and hear a crowd of people laugh. And then a stand-up joke, you or I could think of something tonight and go to a comedy club and try it and hear it get a laugh. And that's so satisfying. But there's also something crazy about, I remember I started writing Good Fortune, probably in the pandemic, I started writing it on and off. There's jokes I wrote in. Then years later, it's like, I'm in a theater in Burbank, and Keanu Reeves is saying the joke, and a crowd of people goes crazy.

Then They're both amazing, but in different ways. Yeah.

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Is there a movie that you'll never get to make, but you think it would be cool? It's so ridiculous. Has there ever been something like that?

Well, I mean, right now, it's so hard to get any movie made. They all feel like, Oh, man, I hope I can make this. I've got two movies, two other scripts that I've written. I had this movie with Bill Murray that I was doing that got shut down. I want to finish that.

Why? What happened?

Oh, well, Bill Murray was part of this movie we did called Being Mortal. Being Mortal is a book by this gentleman named Atul Gawande. It's all about end-of-life issues. It's about stuff that people my age are dealing with their parents. Maybe not all the people, maybe even be older, but they're getting sick, you got to put them in retirement homes, and you got to figure all this stuff out. Very interesting book. A cool book? I highly recommend this book.

Have you met Atul Gawande? Yeah.

I had to talk to Atul to get rights to the book. When I decided to turn into script, he helped me. Is he cool? Yeah, there he is. Very Very cool, very smart guy. I thought, Okay, this is like... The book is not a fiction book. It's non-conviction. But I was like, Oh, man, if you I turned this into a story. There's things that are funny, even though it's dark. There's things that are funny about you have to go take your parents to your mom or dad, you have to take them to all these different retirement homes. All these people in his book, they'd always be like, I don't want to be in here. Everybody in here is old. That's people's perspective. It's funny. Just how out of depth you are talking to these doctors. Doctors talk to you like, you know these super complicated things. They're like, Anyway, so what do you want to do? If you do this, he might be paralyzed. But if you do this, you're like, Wait, what?

Yeah, but if you do this, he might be able to do a backflip. And you're like, Well, that's a mixed bag.

You're just immediately out of your depth. But anyway, I read the story and read the book, and you notice these patterns. The parents are like, No, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then they drive their car through the house or something, and then you're like, We got to take you to home, man. That thing.

But that's really how it happens, though, for people.

It's really how it happens. I was like, Well, if you did a story about this and the guy was Bill Murray, that could be really funny and really poignant because I think about him in Lost in Translation or Broken flowers, and he's got this rare ability to be so funny, but It's so grounded and touching and sincere. I wrote the whole thing with him in mind. There was no like, Oh, I'll get another guy. It was like, This movie only works in my head if it's Bill Murray. I can't think of anybody else. I wrote it, and he's famously the hardest guy to get a hold of to be in something.

Yeah, you can't even get him. Yeah.

I knew him a little bit socially. I had his number. I call him, he answers the phone. I said, Hey, I have a script that I wrote. I said, Hello, whatever, and we talked for a minute. I said, I was calling because I wrote the script and I think you'd be great. He's like, Oh, that's wonderful. Mail it to my house. Very old school. He's printing it out, sending it to my house. So I sent it to him. He calls me a couple of weeks later. He's like, Yeah, I like this. Can you send me the book? I sent him the book. He was really into the book as well. We eventually set it up. Seth Rogen plays his son. Keke Palmer is playing Seth's wife. We shot for three weeks. Then Seth Something happened on set where Bill was inappropriate with someone that was working on the film.

Oh, I remember something about that.

Yeah.

Was it real or was it fabricated? Who knows?

I mean, something really happened.

Okay, so something occurred and people felt their ways about it, right?

Yeah. I don't want to get into it too much because it's not my story to tell.

So something happened on set. Something happened. And you had to shut the movie down.

Yeah. He had a mask on, a COVID mask. And this is from what I understand. He had a COVID mask on, and he was trying to be funny, and he was kissing this woman that he was friends with with the mask on, trying to be funny. But this woman didn't like this and was upset. And eventually it turned into this whole thing, and they shut the whole movie down. No. Yeah. There's the Wikipedia page. But yes, this is what Bill said at the time. I did something I thought was funny. It wasn't taken that way.

The company, the movie studio wanted to do the right thing, so they wanted to check it all out. They investigated, so they stopped their production.

Yeah. The whole movie shut down. Sorry, I shared that 75. It wasn't 75%, we shot half of it. But anyway, I can't remember how we started on this, but I'd love to finish that at some point. If we can, because it was very special.

Gosh, that must have been heartbreaking for everybody.

It was, but it was one of those things that was so crazy. I don't think I ever fully processed it. You want to know something crazy? I remember the week it happened. I was getting married that summer, and my friends wanted to plan some bachelor party for me. I'm not like, Hey, let's go to the strip club, guy. They were like, We're going to go to a restaurant, go to the spa, or something like that. Like a very silly-Go to a math-athon or something. What's a math-athon? We just do a bunch of math?

People are doing math, yeah.

Is that a real thing or did you just make up that word?

I don't know. But I could see For some reason, I just think of- You think that's what I'm into?

No, I'm not in the math-a-thons. Wait, it's a real thing. It's a fundraising event where you do math.

Wow. Yeah, it is. Zuckerberg was a mathlete. Andrew Wang was a mathlete. No, Alexander Wang was a mathlete. A lot of those tech bros were mathletes, dude.

Alexander Wang, the fashion guy?

No, there's a new one.

A new Alexander Wang?

That guy died or something, I think.

Wait, I don't think he did. This is a different guy. Oh, this is a Gen Z billionaire. This is Alexander without the E.

A Wang, they call him in the streets, boy.

Whoa, he's 28 years old.

In the tech trenches, deep in the modus.

Is this screen with the guy looking stuff up with you around all the time or just when you do the podcast?

That was so great.

Because I'm the opposite of this. I never look anything up. You know what my wife said to me yesterday? I don't keep a smartphone on me. I blocked all the shit on the internet. I don't really use the internet. Sometimes I'll just ask my wife stuff the same way you're asking this guy. She's like, You know I'm not the internet. I'm your wife. Because what I'm secretly asking without asking is, Can you look that up for me? Because I can't look it up. She was like, I'm not the internet. It was a dark moment.

You married just to have the internet.

That's so great. I just needed to have a smartphone without having one, so that's why I got married. She She said that to me. I'm not the internet. She loves me very much. We were just texting about how much we love each other.

It sounds like it. Look, we believe all that.

It's tough, man. It's tough. I mean, I've- You're crazy. I've gotten lost and had to call her and been like, Hey, where are we? Where are we? I'm here. I can't find a... Because I live in London and there's- You live in London? Yeah, most of the time I'm there because we met in London. We live there.

Oh, your wife is in London?

I'm going to pull up the ex-girlfriend. She's in some… Some of these photos are wrong. But anyway, we live in London. We met there and… Does she speak Danish as well? Yeah, she speaks Danish. I love languages, but Danish is pretty tough. Is it? It's tough, yeah.

Is it romantic? Is it considered a romantic language?

That's just back to the donkey thing. Okay. She said that… I was like, Well, what's a Danish term of affection? Maybe we can use that. She said it was like, skit. I was like, That sounds harsh. That doesn't sound very sweet. We were somewhere where we saw a donkey, and I said, What's the word for donkey? And she said, Esl. Esl? Esl. She said it was her first word and that she loved donkeys. I was like, Why don't we call each other that? We started calling each other that. Now I have... You see that AE? That's here on this chain, the AE. That's what led to us meeting the little mini donkey in Nashville, where we are now. Boom.

God, dude. Isel.

Isel. Yeah.

Oh, you're my little Isel.

Yeah, exactly. It's pretty close. Yeah, that's it. Pretty close. No, you said it right. You're actually saying it better than I do. You're doing the combined AE. Yeah, that Danish is... It's like, wait a second. Now we're coming up with new letters. You're combining the A and E. I can speak Italian, okay. My family speaks Tamil. It's an Indian language. I can speak that a little bit. Well, But Danish, it's a tricky one.

Well, a lot of them are cis and bi-gender now. Some vowels are. There'll be a vowel that is trans now.

It's changing identity. Yeah, it's like-What's the other one, the AE?

How do we even pronounce Bro, that's all we want.

We just want to show you respect and do it right.

Do whatever you want, but we just need to know how to use you in a word. Some vowels now are like, I don't want to be in your fucking words or whatever. We're like, Bitch or Sir, just be in the fucking word, dude. You're a letter. But that's where it's at now, man.

Dan, it's tough because we'll be there- That's not a real thing. Which thing? The O with the circle?

Elon's kid's name?

I don't know.

E, so...

You're saying it right. That's pretty good pronunciation. No, and whenever we're in Denmark and I try to read a word, I'll try to pronounce it right. I just don't know the pronunciation rules. I get everything wrong. But wait, how do we start? Oh, because I use her as a phone. Sometimes I'm walking around in London. In London, there's a lot of maps on the street. So if I get lost, I can find the map and make my way. But sometimes I keep walking around hoping to run into one of these maps, and I won't run into one, and I have to call her, and I have to be like, Hey, I'm over here. You got to tell me how to get to the tube station. And I remember that even when I first came to LA, I don't know whenever you first came to LA, how long ago it was, but there wasn't GPS and stuff. Gps was a fancy thing if they had it at all. I would print out directions on MapQuest. I remember I would call my little brother. My little brother was a few years younger than me. He was still in South Carolina.

I'd call him and be like, Hey, man, I'm on César Chávez. How do I get back? Because we didn't have the stuff. When you came to LA, was it like that?

Yeah, dude. People had maps, drawings. You'd have a guy who had directions tattooed on his arm of how to get home if he was an alcoholic or whatever. Oh, my God. Shit was definitely more primitive back then. People would just write on their dashboard how to get home. Yeah, people had to remember.

Remember when you just-Knew everybody's phone number.

Yeah, but also when somebody would give you directions, dude, and if you missed one of them or something and you were going to a party, you just drove around the neighborhood for an hour and then went home. You would drive and roll your windows down and see if you heard a party from the backyard. We were basically a bunch of Magellans.

It's strange to think there's people that grew up without knowing that at all. It really does seem nuts that we were able to be okay without it.

Well, it's like, you imagine now, it's like we're going to go to the airport and nobody's going to go through TSA, right? Because that's how it was.

I barely remember that. That you could go up to the gate and all that stuff. All of my travel, I started doing comedy by the time I was touring and stuff and traveling all the time like we do.

That was-So you were already big touring when you started doing comedy or no?

No, I'm saying I didn't start traveling a bunch, touring and doing all this stuff until after TSA and all these things. I barely remember traveling. I wasn't on that many… I wasn't flying all the time like I do now. I barely remembered that time where you could walk up to the gate.

I might not even remember it, actually.

Yeah, I mean, that all happened after 9/11. It was after 2001.

Yeah, maybe a couple of flights I'd take them, probably. But yeah, dude, imagine if we went back to that now. Would you think, say right now, you go to the airport, there's no TSA. Would you trust everyone enough to be like, Okay, we're all going to fly home together, guys. Does everybody promise they're not going to cause any problems?

I don't know. It's wild times right now. I don't know.

And they would ask you twice, probably.

I was in the airport these past couple of days, and the government's been shut down. Those people, they're working for free. The guy was like, Hey, just so you know, guys, we're working for free. I was like, Oh, my God.

That's unbelievable.

It's wild.

Yeah, the government just turned into a shitty vehicle. It's like every now and then it just fucking shuts down or whatever?

You got to understand. For me to be in London and read about all the stuff happening here and then come here. I was in Chicago yesterday, and my friend was like, Wild time to be in Chicago. I was like, What do you mean? They're like, Oh, the National Guard there just They're grabbing Mexican people. I was like, What? When did that happen? I'm just over here trying to tell people about good fortune. They're like, They're grabbing Mexican people. The National Guard's there. Tsa. Oh, yeah. You're getting on a plane later to fly to Nashville? Oh, yeah. The government shut down. Most of the air traffic people went home. Oh, great. Thanks. Yeah, it's okay. I'm going to fly to Nashville and then get on another plane back to New York same day. Cool weekend to be on all these planes.

Yeah, it's just the bad news bears of TSA right now.

You got all the people that are down to come and work in for free.

Yeah, dude. You have just the militant guy. You have the guy who's been waiting to get in the game. No training, but just fucking waiting to get in the-I'm flying back today.

This is going to be a really dark last interview snippet. Here's a clip where Aziz predicts.

Oh, my God, bro. That's so hilarious that there's backup, everybody's backup right now. The park wardens are like, Bro, welcome to the fucking park, bro. It's just like the second string, dude. He's like, Dude, the owls are fucking monumental right now, bro.

We take all these people for granted.

That's so true, huh? Well, the raids and stuff like that are crazy because they let so many people into the country, right? Like, Without having a pattern of this is an organized way to do something. Because I think they need to organize it. It needs to be organized. Because it's odd if people are here that they live in fear that they're always going to be found out or something. And then it's odd that there's nefarious people here that don't want to be found out. So I think they need some organization of it. But yeah, the fact that it gets where people are being ripped out of places. Then you don't know also, some of these days, I really believe you don't know what's real and what's not when you see it sometimes. It could literally be a scene that was put together, like some of the Antifa stuff you would see in the park during the pandemic and shit.

I watched that movie. Did you see One Battle After Another? Mm-mm. It's good? It's amazing. But it's crazy because he wrote that movie a long time ago. I was in Chicago and I was like, damn, this is One Battle After Another because in the movie, it's very Very much like a military state. The military is just around going and doing this stuff. It's wild. The dude, he's supposedly been working on a movie for 15 years or something. It's out now when this stuff is so top of mind. It's so in there.

Yeah, Eddington was really great. You see Eddington?

I didn't see Eddington, but I've heard it. It's they're dealing with similar stuff. I need to see that.

Yeah, just a lot of things happening at once. But I believe we're headed to a surveillance state. I believe that that's why they're trying- That happened a long time ago.

No.

I'm talking about drones, bro. I'm talking about drones in the sky surveillance, like that vibe.

Oh, my God.

That's where we're heading. Dude, the movie I want to see, this is how I think it ends, Blacks versus Drones, dude. What? That's how it ends, bro. People are wondering, how does time, how does this all- Where do Indian people fit in this?

We're just running the door. Okay, the Where do the Indians fit in this movie?

Okay, we need Kyrie Irving to move over to the- Kyrie Irving? Yeah, you're just like- Was he okay?

Because he played basketball.

No, I'm just thinking of a cool black guy. But yeah, you're like, okay. But Dude, that's how it ends. I think everybody's like, What's going on in society and these different groups and people and genocide, all this stuff going on? You're like, How does it all... I think it's Blacks First Drones.

I don't know. It's got to be. For me, as As someone that used to live here and now comes here occasionally for work, every time I come back, it just feels wild. I think it feels wilder to me because I think for people that are here, it's like, Oh, they're slowly seeing it get crazy, so they're not going from one to 100 like I do. My time in LA, I remember just seeing the amount of tents and all that stuff, going to LA and to New York after COVID, because during COVID, I was in London the whole time with my wife. Coming back to both those cities after COVID, I was like, Whoa.

Yeah, it's like a Slipnaught tailgate out there now. It's fucking crazy.

My wife loves Slipnaught. You're lying. My wife has a PhD in physics. Or how? She's a genius. She had this emo phase. Every now and then, I'll just bring up that she loves... My two favorite facts about my wife, She's going to hate that I'm bringing this stuff up. No, it's important. One is that she loves Slipnaught. The other thing is that she was Little Miss Denmark. That was a little competition for little kids when she was 5, 6-year-olds, and she won two years in a row, and then they stopped the contest because she kept winning.

God. They shut it down?

They shut it down.

What? They don't like somebody really stepping out of the norm there?

I think they were just like, We shouldn't be doing these little pageants for these kids. My wife, she said they would have a... You'd have the talent portion or whatever, and she would be doing her dance or whatever. They're like, All right, that's good. She's like, No, I'm not finished with my routine.

I don't mean to be an Esso, but I'm about to win this bitch for a third time. Dude, holy shit. She's like the Boston Celtics of those fucking Danish competitions.

Yeah, and then she had her Ebo phase and got really into slip-naught, rebelled against the pageant life.

You shut down a pageant queen like that where they can't even perform anymore, that is a direct avenue to slip-naught.

Cory understands.

How else do you even manage that stress and strain? Where are you going to put those fucking pirouettes, bro? You're going to package those bitches and put them into a slip-naught mosh pit. When I was there, you had to have a knife. One of you has got to take turns carrying it up your rectum.

Wait, it's up your butt?

That's the prison wallet.

You'll never leave home without. You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

I'm Mariana Vanzeller, and after reporting on Black Markets for my emu-winning National Geographic show, Trafficked, I'm launching a podcast. Are you getting emotional on me. Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows. The Hidden Third is out now with new episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe at youtube.

Com/marianavanzeller. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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I didn't think we'd get into Little Miss Denmark. My wife's going to be thrilled.

Oh, that's awesome. I'm glad that you found love out there, man. Were you good with the ladies growing up? What was your energy like?

It's weird because I grew up in South Carolina.

I remember every school in the South had an Indian guy. Was it like that at your school or was there a big Indian group?

There's two versions of this. There's like, Oh, if you're in Atlanta or something, there's the Indian crew, and they hang out. Then there's what I grew up with, which is just me. When I was little, I forget this sometimes. In first and second grade, there was this Thai girl, and her name was Tisha, which doesn't make sense. That doesn't really sound like a Thai name, but her name was Tisha.

But they left-C'est a black tie.

It sounds like a black tie.

It sounds like a black tie affair.

She was Thai. But they left, and then it was just me as Indian. It's in the '80s. It's so interesting to look back. I was thinking about this, and I had a conversation with my mom a while ago that really blew me away. First off, as soon as I tell people I grew up in South Carolina, they're always like, Oh, must have been so racist, all this stuff. Of course, there's moments where it wasn't nice and whatever.

People calling you almost n-word or something like that?

N-word? Not almost. Oh, really? Yeah.

Because- Well, those people are nearsighted or whatever. I feel like. I don't know. That's crazy.

But there was also, I feel like there was a time I was writing something and I asked my parents to just tell me… I didn't want to write stuff about people being racist to people. I wanted to write something positive. I was like, Tell me things you remember that were positive, like experiences you had being someone. Because my parents were there in the '80s.

Yeah, it was different for sure.

People there didn't even know what Indian people were. They didn't see them in the culture. They didn't see nothing. They didn't understand It looks like a black person that they didn't finish the job on or whatever.

Kind of. No judgment.

Let's just make sure that quote is attributed to you.

For sure, dude. But I think it's like... Because sometimes you do see that Indian dude, you're like, Is this a black dude or an Indian dude?

We're joking, but it is what people were saying. They had never seen Indian people before. Yes, I agree. They were not in the media or anything. My experience, I'm talking about the positive stuff. First off, I skipped first and second grade. I did first and second grade in one year. People were like, Oh, my God, this genius little brown boy. I was in a small school. There was 30 kids in my class. There's 8,000 people that live in my town. But I was raised by my parents.

First grade is fucking easy, dude.

First grade is easy. My dad would show me- Bro, the fact that it takes a whole year, you're like, What the fuck are we doing here? My dad would write little math problems and stuff for me, so I was really advanced in math and stuff. It's so easy. In the middle of first grade. It's so easy.

Go back and look at it.

Yeah, you should be able to teach your kid all that stuff before they get to school.

You can even eavesdrop. You can tap into classrooms, you can watch it. It's like, this is so fucking easy, dude. I wish you had a ring camera in there and just be giving the kids the answers and shit. What? It's yellow. If they had one of those ring cameras, you could talk in a children's class or whatever.

I mean, back then, no ring camera. Just had my dad teach me stuff. By the time I was halfway through first grade, they called my parents. They're like, You got to get him out of here. He's got to go up to second grade. I went to second grade, and that was this big story in the school that some kid had skipped the grade.

Yeah, it's like when LeBron left Miami.

It was exactly like LeBron. I was like LeBron with very elementary math problems.

Yeah, LeBron.

Yes, exactly. But when I was thinking back about my childhood and time of my parents, and there was these two ladies that took care of us. First off, I was talking to my mom, and she was talking about how when she came to South Carolina, my dad had been in America. He was in New Jersey doing his residency. Then he went back to India, married my mom, and then they came to South Carolina, where my dad moved because he applied for these jobs all over the country. In South Carolina, they didn't have a lot of the doctor he was. He was a gastroenterologist. Then they moved to South Carolina. My mom comes to South Carolina. She was never left India like this. Fuck, that's crazy. She's in Bennettville, South Carolina. Not like, Oh, you're in New York City. No, Bennettville, South Carolina. My dad brings her home, and then he has to go to work. I asked my mom, I was like, What was that day like? I put this in my show. She said, Oh, I just sat on the couch and I cried. I was like, Oh, my God, it's so dark. It was like so much braver than I could be.

There's no FaceTime, none of that. You're really alone.

It was hard to even- There's cable television.

Yeah, but I'm talking about to have a connection with your family or anything, there's no way to communicate.

You're just praying and lighting candles and putting those oranges in that little thing.

Even making a long distance call was a different thing back then. It was like $11. Yeah, it was not the way it is now where you could... So She was really alone, but she used to go and do laundry all the time to just be around other people. There was some lady there, an older white lady, that recognized that... Saw her with me and became friendly with her. They called her Grandma. I don't know the woman's real name, actually. I called her Grandma. She would take care of me and looked out for our family. She eventually, I think she moved or something or whatever, but she couldn't take care of us anymore. This woman who we called Nana, that's what her grandkids called her, she started taking care of us. Then there was this woman named Ms. Buhla who would take care of us after school.

She had some tits on her, I bet.

Ms. Buhla, rest in peace. I'm not going to comment on that. She passed away my bad.

I didn't know that.

I hope- Let's not comment. But Ms. Buhla, as you might guess from the name Buhla, Black woman from the south, and would cook the meanest Southern food for us. I would eat Indian food and Southern food. Nana and Ms. Buhla were part of my life. I I had a sister that passed away, and she was a few years younger than me, and she had a very rare... She had something called hurler syndrome. It's a super rare liver disease. Sorry, it's obviously a little heavy for me. She passed away.

What's her name?

Her name is Nafis.

Nafis. That's a pretty name, huh?

Yeah. She passed away. Nana passed away a few years ago when I was in college. It was a while ago now. I didn't get a chance to... Ms. Buhl, I got to say a proper goodbye to her. I went and saw her when she was staying in retirement home. Nana, I didn't have that same moment. I was in college, and it wasn't the same thing where I had that opportunity to say bye. But my mom had told me that she went to go see, visit my sister at the cemetery. My sister's buried in South Carolina, in Bennettville. That is a tricky thing because my family's from a Muslim background, and they wanted to do... They were asked in the cemetery, Can we do the things we do for our culture and The cemetery was like, Yeah, of course, whatever you need to do, which was just so cool to me that they were open to that. The whole community were visiting our family and everything. I remember even a priest came by to just... Even though we were a different religion, he came and wanted to talk to us and stuff. Everyone was just so kind about it.

My mom told me that she went to go see my sister at the cemetery, and she said, Oh, and we saw Nana, too. I was like, What do you mean? She's like, Well, Nana's buried right next to her.

No.

I melted as a human because I did not know that. To me, I heard that and I was like, Wow. I was saying all this stuff about crazy this country is and how crazy it feels right now. But that story, that doesn't It's not going to happen anywhere else in the world, man. Like, those two people, my sister and this woman.

That befriended you guys. Yeah.

Have that close of bond where she's like, I want to be buried next to her? I did not know that. I heard that and I was like, I don't know why it popped in my head, but I'm so glad it did. Then I got to share that with you because I heard that story and I was like, Man, people need to hear that story because it's not the story people-want to tell.

It's not the story that the media wants to tell.

It's not a story that-It's a story that doesn't really get the clicks.

But it's the story that's probably... It's the truth that most people... That the human part of us is what makes us special. And that's the part that we should all try and lean into the most is that we're this special thing that can care about each other. Yeah.

I mean, The fact that these people saw my parents and tried to forge this bond with them. I hope we're still a place where that stuff can happen.

I think it happens a lot. I think you're just right. I think it's not the news, but I think it is more common, probably, than we think. Thanks for sharing that, dude. It is an important story. That's a great story.

Sorry. I agree.

Did your sister have it the whole time when she was growing up, when she was from birth?

Yeah, it was one of these things where the life in spectacy with that hurlars, it's not very long. She passed when she was six, eight years old.

Was she- It's one of these things.

I don't really talk about it very much. A lot of people, even that know me, don't know I had a sister because people would ask me, Oh, do you have any siblings? I'm like, Oh, yeah, I I have a little brother. I had a sister that passed away. I would say it like that, and then people are like,. It's a very heavy thing to hear all of a sudden. I was like, Oh, I don't want to make people uncomfortable. I'll just say, Oh, I have a little brother. Then they'll be like, What's you guys gap? Oh, he's seven years old. Wow, that's a big gap. Yeah, I'm going to not go down this thing because I don't want to bum everybody out because we're all just hanging out at Chick-fil-A right now.

The third year sitting there tapping her foot like, What are we doing here? No, dude, my sister was born with a rare liver disease, and she had to get a liver transplant when we were kids. Oh, wow. We spent most of our childhood… She was always this thing that we couldn't touch because she always had to have these surgeries and stuff. I think it just reminds me a lot of that. I think some of that stuff. Oh, man. I think it's just interesting when you grow up with a sibling that's sick because I think it... I never even thought about it until you were saying some of this. It just like... I don't know. You have to adjust Trust yourself, I think, to try and maybe... My sister got most of the care, but she needed most of it. So it was weird. So there were times where I'd be like, I don't... Later on in life, I'd be like, Oh, I didn't get this care. But it was like, I didn't need it the most.

What was you guys's age difference?

Two years. She's still alive. She ended up getting a liver transplant. She got one of the first liver transplants. We moved to Arizona. She got it out there. That's incredible. But it was just this whole time when she was a kid, she was always being flown off to these places, and they sounded magical, like Rochester, Minnesota, just different places where there's these big hospitals. She'd come back like this, almost like this build a bear that somebody had done a shitty job with. You know what I'm saying? Just all these scars and stuff. But it was weird because you couldn't hold it. It was interesting. Did you have any experience like that with your sister, or what was it like?

There wasn't all these things to try because the hurlers is pretty… They don't really have a thing. There's like, Oh, you can maybe do a bone marrow transplant. But it's not really a thing they've made much progress on. So there was never anything like that. I don't know. It's interesting talking about this because you think about… It's like when you're a kid, it's so hard to understand what's happening. You have no frame of reference. When I look back on that stuff as an adult, I can't imagine how hard it was for my parents to have a child that has something like that and then to lose a child. It's strange to step outside of yourself. Honestly, this is some of the most I've talked about it with anybody.

I don't mean to cry about it.

It's also a thing in the… No, not at all. I don't think prying at all. I think it's really interesting that your sister had something as well. But there's a thing with Indian families. Maybe it's a lot of families in that time. It's like, you don't talk about stuff.

Oh, really? Is that an Indian thing?

I think there's something of like, Oh, you're not as open about your feelings and stuff, and you're just a little bit more closed off. I think so, yeah. With Asian families, Indian families, I think with emotional stuff like that.

But you guys do reincarnation, so you're probably just like, Oh, we can have the feelings later. We can have this.

That's in Hinduism. That's a different thing.

Oh, really? Fuck. So you guys are one time only?

Islam, it's the same as Christianity. It's in terms of that stuff, as far as I know, I'm not a super religious guy, but yes, the reincarnation is just in Hindu culture. Dang.

So you guys are one and done, huh?

I mean, so is a lot of people. Okay.

I'm just saying.

But yeah. Man, this got really… We really went for a heavy turn after microdonkeys. It's okay. You're teared up over here. I'm teared up. But it's good to talk about this stuff. It's so strange to think back about those times and everything my family went through, especially my parents.

I never think about that. I always think about things. This is one place that I struggle with, I think. A lot of times I'll think about certain periods and things that happened, and I only think about it as to how it affected me. And it's like, man, to get into that place of where you're even thinking, well, how did this affect my appearance? I was eating dinner with some friends yesterday, and in the background, she has these four kids, and they're beautiful kids. They have the cuteest kids. They're all going haywire. And it was the first time I thought, holy shit, my mom had four kids and nobody to fucking help. Can you imagine what that would be like these days?

That sounds impossible.

Impossible. Our parents were able to do that stuff. But it was the first time that I even had a perspective moment like that that was that clear.

Oh, yeah.

For you to have that, I think is pretty cool that you think like, Oh, what my parents must have went through. Because it's like, for us, it's a sibling, but for them, it's probably something that feels far greater. Yeah. Anyway, I didn't mean to delve into that, man.

No, I'm glad we did. I think it's a really interesting thing to talk about. For me, it's nothing much.

I bet you'd be so proud of you.

You know what I think about sometimes is there was... Do you know the comic strip? Comic strip Live in New York? Oh, yeah. You know that club? Yeah. That was the first club I ever got passed at. There was a guy, his name was Lucian Hold. He was the guy that would pass you. You've heard of like SD at the cellar? He was like Estee at the cellar. He was the guy.

Yeah, there's always that person.

There's always a person that was a gatekeeper. I went in there when I was 18. What was cool about the comic strip was They had a thing where anybody could audition. You just lined up and then you could audition. Which is crazy. Which is like... Because I don't know if this was your experience when you were starting up, but it was like, you just wanted a shot, right? Oh, yeah. You just wanted a shot. The of that you could be a regular at the Comedy Club. I remember I used to go to the Comedy Cellar, and I just be like, Oh, my God. Could you imagine just getting spots here? Could you imagine just how amazing it would be to get spots? That was my dream.

I know. You're so right.

I went to the comic strip. They had this open call. You just had to wait in line, and then you'd pick from a... I believe what would do is you'd pick from a lottery and it would give you a date. A date? Yeah. They would do on Mondays, they'd have a a certain number of people that were from this audition. That's cool. I picked a date, and then I showed up, and you went through this one woman, and if she said, Okay, you can see Lucian, you'd audition for Lucian. I got through it, and then I auditioned for Lucian. You wait around, you wait around, all these things. Even like SNL, you hear these stories, you feel like, Yeah, you just wait around. They just make you wait around. Then he spoke to me at the end, and he was He was like, You could start working at the club. I was like, Oh. I was terrible. I was not good. But I was very young and I was very comfortable on stage. He told me, he was like, When people your age come in here, he was like, You're still at NYU, right? I was like, Yeah.

He said, Adam Sandler was in NYU when I passed him. And so was Sarah Silverman. I was like, Oh, wow. I remember I said, Oh, wow. It'd be amazing if I had a career like that. He's like, I don't know if that's in the cards for you, but he He was the most straight shooting guy. There's very few people that are honest like that that I've met in my 20 something years. He was the guy that was like that. He was like, I don't know if that's It's not an impression of him, but he was like, I don't know if that's something that's in the cards for you, but you could start working in the club. You would do late night, which is like they'd have the show, and then you could sign to go on at the end of the show. So there'd be like, Nobody there. I do that all the time. For sure.

But getting up on stage, even just walking up. When you're coming up, if there's six people there, it feels like a million people.

You're so excited.

The feeling that is the energy, the fear and that energy and that nervous, it feels like a million.

I'll say this, and you're going to light up because you'll know this feeling. Sometimes someone on the bill that was supposed to at nine o'clock wouldn't show up, and they'd pull someone from late night. So you'd get to go on-When people were still there. Still there, yes. I remember one time-I'm like, I'm going to show these bitches.

That's what I would say. I had an aggressive nature, but go on.

But it was like this like, Oh, I'm going to get to prove myself a little bit. But one time, I remember Chris Rock dropped in, and I went on after him. Everyone's like, Oh, Chris Rock just went on. They just all started leaving. I told Chris the story the other day. I was like, I forgot this. I forgot. And now he's my fucking friend. It's the craziest thing in the world to me. But Lucian, he had a disease called a sceloderma. I don't know why I'm saying the disease he had, but anyway. Is it ashy skin? No, sorry. It's like a skin problem. Yeah, I don't know what it is exactly. But-sceloderma. This dude stopped looking up stuff because it's gotten too dark. The stuff were top. He's like, I'm not going to pull up this stuff on Wikipedia. It's too dark. He's like, Oh, I don't think it's appropriate. I'm not going to. I'm just going to let this be. I'll wait till they start talking about mini cows again. I can pull up those cute pictures.

He has a whole barrel full.

Well, maybe I do bring it up because if someone wants to donate to his fund or whatever Lucian had this disease, and we knew he was passing away, and I went and visited him. It was like that movie Being Mortal. I knew he was passed away. I knew this was probably our last conversation. Dude, this dude passed away. Chris spoke at his funeral. I think Seinfeld may have said something. I can't remember. I remember I went to the funeral, and I was a little kid. I remember I went and was crying in the bathroom and stuff because this dude was the first dude ever to genuinely believe that I could do something in our world. The first person to say, Hey, I'm going to give you... It was like, fucking 10 bucks or whatever. But he was like, I believe in the idea of paying you to tell jokes. That's cool. We had a conversation, and I remember he said something to me, and he talked about some comic that he used to know that went to LA. Not a super successful guy, but a guy that did okay. He was like, you know. He said this guy told him that he was in LA, and he said that...

That's Lucian. Yes, that's Lucian Holt. But if you talk to guys like- They love him? Yeah, and they remember him from back in the day. He was a character. He's the guy that passed Eddie Murphy. The famous story of Chris Rock is like, Eddie Murphy was at the club, and he asked Lucian, Do you have any black comics? He said, Yeah, I got one. I'll put them up if you'll watch them. It was Chris Rock. Wow. Then Eddie Murphy watched them and then put them in Beverly Hills cop, too. But anyway.

Dude, that's so great, though.

It's a huge deal. It's a huge I'm not going to give out a validation because I can't really explain. It's still like when I think of all the things I've done in my career, it's still I was excited about that. I mean, dude, I think it was 10 years ago, I did Madison Square Garden. It was a similar feeling to get past. But anyway, he told me this story about some guy in LA, and he said that guy told him, There's all these idiots in LA, and if they're able to do it, I can do it, too. Something to that extent. He said it more eloquent than that. I'm not doing it justice. But he basically said to me, You're going to be okay. And he left me with that. It was really cool. Lucian did? Yeah. He said, You're going to be okay. You're a smart guy, and you're going to be okay. I've been fortunate enough. I think I'm... I mean, that was when I was a little kid. I hadn't done anything, really. I feel like I've been fortunate enough in my career to be more than okay and done a lot of great things I never would have thought possible when I was interacting with Lucian One of my, not regrets, I don't know, just one of my, Oh, man, feelings is that, Oh, this guy, that was the first guy to believe in me.

To see me, yeah. Didn't get to see how far I really went. We're… Sorry. I feel like I'm taking up too much of your time because I keep- No, this is good. Okay.

You're a great storyteller, I'm realizing. That's honestly one thing I've realized sitting here, and I can see why you're able to do what you do even more, writing your movies and knowing, yeah, saying how streamlined it is, I'm enjoying it. So go on. Sorry.

I was in a cab one time in London, and I was like… It's weird because How did you become successful? It's weird when you drop into a comedy club, everyone goes nuts, and everything's a little sweeter because they're excited because you're famous. I was in a cab with my wife in London, and someone was like, Tell us about this thing, whatever. I talked about this whole story of something that happened to us. When I left, the cab driver said, Hey, you're a really good storyteller. I was like, Holy shit. That was like winning an Emmy for me because I was like, That guy has no clue who I am. He went out of his way to tell me that. That made me feel really good.

Was he an Indian guy?

No. Why would he be Indian, Theo?

Racism.

He was like a black guy that was fully finished.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Very fair. He was a fully finished black guy. He was a black guy.

I love race stuff. It's fun to joke about and think about because it's so different and it's fun. That's That's what I think- It's some of the funny stuff. You're right, man. Sorry. But yes, somebody telling you a great storyteller. It's so funny. It's something that's that one word or one thing.

It's like- And you get it from someone that doesn't know anything because sometimes you feel like, Oh, man. Not like, Oh, people don't. You feel like, I don't know how much of this is sweetened up because of whatever. It's very frustrating because I don't think anyone that's successful like that wants any of that. But you get a little bit of that when you drop in and you're working on material. When you're on stage for a while, eventually people care.

You don't know if it's that good. That's the worst part. You're like, Is this even good? And you're just getting unfair reactions. But then hopefully, if you're self-aware enough and that judge inside of you, that little part of you that's always hated you is still looking, lurking around.

You got to have that guy in there. That guy needs to be there. That guy needs to be there. And if he's there because all your people are, Oh, man, it's your best hour. It's getting there. You got to have that little guy. And you got to have that little guy. And look, whether it's a movie or a stand-up show, screening a movie, it's like people don't lie eventually. They'll be sweet for a little bit, but eventually they are like, All right, come on. That drops after a few minutes.

Yeah, and if you start smoking your own bullshit, too, that's when it can get really spooky.

Oh, that's when you got to I'm not really sure. I've been around people enough to be like, Oh, when you start having a bunch of people around you that tell you you're awesome, that's when everything starts falling apart.

Have you ever had ego problems? Have you ever had anything like that? Have you ever had to check your own ego type of Because ego is so dangerous because it can grow in the distance. It's almost like something that you don't see growing. It's almost like you're standing there with your shadow, and then your shadow gets bigger without you noticing it.

I think the way I hopefully have been able to avoid that problem is I'm not around all the time. You know what I mean? I go away in a hole and work on stuff. This is the most shit I've done. I haven't been on your podcast. I haven't been on anybody's podcast. I haven't done anything. I've just been working. Being back out in-The wild? Yeah, in the press world, it's been a little overwhelming for me. I get very overwhelmed. Whenever I remember I finished season one and two of my show, whenever it came on Netflix, I left the country because I was just a little bit... It was just too much for me. I went to Japan for a couple of months because I see it be somewhere.

Really? For months? Did you see Kanye or not?

He wasn't there at the time, but I wanted to be somewhere where people didn't really know who I was. It felt a bit... It can be a little overwhelming. That part of our jobs, of red carpets and interviews, it's a lot.

Yeah, I never done a lot of that stuff. That part I don't know about, but I can imagine, though.

I like the work, but I'm here and I've been doing all this stuff. I love doing this because we're just having a great conversation. Not everything is this fun, but I do it because I I feel like it's a part of the job and I got to support the work and the studio that paid for the movie and everything. So I do it, but it's not my... I like the work. I mean, all I'm looking forward to is getting back on... To work. Getting back to work, being on set with some people and being like, Hey, do this. Or I'm going back on the road for a little bit, being on the road. That is a billion times more fun than some of the stuff you have to do, excluding this. I actually like that podcast or a thing now because I did Amy Poller's podcast. That was so fun. She's so great. She's great. I hadn't seen her in a while, and I was like, Oh, man, I'm just excited to be with you for an hour and change because I hadn't seen you in so long. Yeah, dude.

Thanks for making me think about... We had a guy named Tommy at the Comedy Store, He was like the guy, and he was like the guy, and he's like this character. I've heard his name.

Yeah.

People impersonated him all the time. He really was. He had this long hair, and he looked like a rock and roll guy. I believe he was. I think he also played in a band. And he made jellies and jams, and he would bring those. He was this very eccentric type of guy. But he took care of Mitzy, sure. But he would be the guy, and he'd sit there, and he'd open little curtains. The little will call booth had little curtains on it, and he'd be like, You're doing good. But I went to the Comedy Store one time. I was trying to find out how do they do signups, I remember. And I was buying a beer on the porch, and he thought I was somebody else. He's like, Haven't seen you around here in a while. We miss you coming around. And I was like, Yeah. He goes, Why don't you come in? Come back in on Sunday, man. I want to see you back up there.

He fucking had me confused with somebody. Did you do the other spot? Yeah, he did the spot. Did you put your name down?

No, I didn't even think about that. I just kept fucking doing this.

How did your set go?

It went good enough where I got to keep going. But before that, for sure, I went and signed up and waited outside. There's a guy that's practicing juggling who can't even talk, and he's telling his jokes through bowling pins and shit. There's all types of stuff. There's somebody training a bird or whatever, and he's barely trained, and he's trying to train it really fast in the parking lot. It's like, you cannot train a bird really fast.

But This is the same thing I was talking about earlier. It's so interesting to me that comedy, comedians, we're all having... This is a crazy moment to be a comedian, and people are having such overwhelming amounts of success. But at the end of the day, all All of us started just wanting a room full of people, just a crowd, and to be able to perform. Yeah.

One thing that was great about Good Fortune, dude, and I haven't finished it, but I really like it, and I'm excited to see the end of it.

It's not that long a movie, by the way.

But I didn't get home last night until probably 11: 30.

No, I'm just saying for people that are worried that it's like a four-hour- Oh, yeah.

No, it's not. It's an hour and a half heavy. But it's good, dude. There started to be some really good plot changes for me that I really dug, right around the spot where I'm at, where you think it's going to go one way, and now it starts to change up. And then, I don't want to give too much of it away, but one thing that was really amazing about it, and my friend was watching it with me, was that you felt of how tough it is that first year to in LA. You felt of when your character is sleeping in his car, right? Or when there's DoorDash delivery and just the jobs you get when you first get to a big city to try to survive. The parking tickets and how you lose your car. You just come out of a place you barely had enough money to go get some avocados. It was the one thing you were treating yourself to this week. It was like two avocados. I'm going to cut those bitches up and I'm going to eat those bitches, and then I'm going to go to sleep. You were so excited and you come out and your fucking car has been towed because you didn't pay tickets.

All that shit, dude. My friend and I slept in the McDonald's ball pit. We would jump the fence and sleep in that fucking ball pit because it was some more space to lay out. If you got under the balls, there's hair in there, there's coins under there, but there's a little bit more room for your body than like... Because we tried to sleep in his car one night and it was just a nightmare. But going through all of that, yeah. The hair goes to the bottom, which I don't understand how that works. That's science. They should see what's in the bottom of a lot of these. It's not good. But yeah, we would jump over the fence and sleep in one that closed at 10: 00. We get in and just get five hours of sleep or something.

Oh, my God. I'm so sorry.

But I could relate. No, it was awesome. It was fucking great stories. One night, we're in there, dude. We're talking shit to each other, laughing and stuff. And a fucking Asian guy's on the slide. He's asleep.

He's on the slide. He pipes up. He's very exposed.

No. In one of those high slides where there was room where you could get... It was encompassed. He was in the best spot.

Oh, my God.

Yes, he was in one of the tubes.

Oh, damn. That's better than the ball pit. That's a pro move.

Yeah, and even came up to the window. It was like a little hamster showing up. It was pretty fucking dope. But, dude, that was like... But you forget about all the pieces of the things and the moments that were so big.

And that was in LA?

And that was in LA.

Which McDonald's in LA?

It's on Wilshire Boulevard. Wilshire and- Does that Asian guy have a podcast now, too?

I hope he does.

I think it's Roni Chang.

I I was doing one of those shows at the Comedy Cellar where people don't know who's going to show up. It was like, surprise headliner, and it's just me working on stuff. I walked by the line and some lady goes, I hope it's not Roni Chan. Oh, really? Yeah, but then I found out that it's because she'd been to another one of these and it was Roni Chan. We talked about it in the show, but it wasn't because she doesn't like. I love to Roni Chan. I love Roni Chan.

I just got to see him last week. I bumped into him. I went into the Comedy Cellar.

Okay, yeah.

Just stopped in. He was in there. It was awesome, dude.

Just to get to see him. He's great.

You got some great specials, too, if you haven't seen him. I get to get him to come in and talk sometime.

Yeah, no, he's great. But I just thought it was funny I'm not going to walk by and hear that.

That's so funny, dude. Yeah. But yeah, that's one thing I loved about Good Fortune. You and Seth Rogen are just... You guys are buddies, I guess it is.

We spoke about this movie, and if anyone listening is going to see the movie, Please see it in a theater with the crowd because we were talking about these movies like-I think it's worth it for sure.

It definitely felt like a real movie to me. It didn't feel like some forced shit. I know. Sometimes you get these movies and it's like, It felt shit feels forced or too fake or it's not real. I didn't feel any of that. I didn't feel any pandering for some social causes or any shit like that.

No, it's just trying to be very real and very funny. It's good, dude.

I'm fucking excited about finishing it because your character starts to get like, What the fuck? I thought he was great. But you see the different parts of us that can come out and come to the surface when different things are attached to us.

Yeah. But when we were making the movie, Seth and I would talk about how We'd go to movie theaters and see movies like Anchorman or Superbad or Pineople Express, and you'd have a room. It'd be like a stand-up show, a room full of people erupting. It's like what we feel when you do stand-up. If we did stand-up and there was only one person in the crowd, that's not the same thing. The people make a difference. Seeing a movie, a comedy in theaters, it's something that's gone away after the pandemic and everything. I hope we can bring it back. We were just in Chicago last night and we screened the movie. We've been doing these little secret screenings, and I've been sitting in a little bit and watching it. I'm like, I don't even remember the last time I've been in a packed theater watching a comedy. I hope the movie works and that people get to make more comedies and they get to see them in theaters because it's something that I miss. Especially because our movie is an original movie, a comedy, theatrical.

It's tough to get it done. I'm not even lying or joking or pandering to you or to our fans. No, I appreciate it. I wouldn't say that. I think it's worth I want to see. I think if you took a date or a friend or your buddy, you guys would have a good time. It would be worth your money. It'd be worth driving over there and sitting in there. So far, and I'm not even done with it unless it gets really bad in the second half.

No, the back gas. Oh, man, the back gas is great. We'd have to talk about it afterwards because it really relates to a lot Some of the things, some of the stuff we were talking about earlier, some of the emotional things we were talking about in terms of just seeing other people and seeing what they're going through and just giving them a look. I was thinking about that when my mom was telling me that story. But yeah.

Yeah, that was a great story, man. Why do you feel like you have to do so much? Because this is something I've struggled with in my own life.

I think I need to have a kid or something because I feel like as I've gotten older, I do things like, Oh, yeah. I'm like, Finish.

You're so prolific. You've done so many TV shows. You've written, you've directed. Haven't you won an Emmy before?

Yeah, I won two Emmys.

Damn, brother. Gang. But I'm just saying, and sorry, I don't know a lot about that. It's fine.

But why do you have...

Do you ever know why you feel like you... Because some people, they could do half of that and feel extremely They're really accomplished, and they would be. But do you feel like is it financial, which is fine. It's definitely nice to have money and have security. Is there something that you find because-Not financial, because doing movies, I technically would make way more I'm like, I'm not making money touring.

I'm losing money doing these movies. I'm trying to make a movie for theaters. It's like trying to be like, Hey, I want to build a tower of records. Good luck, Aziz. It's not what's the lucrative thing. You know what I It's interesting because my heyday of touring and everything was probably 10 years ago. When I did The Garden and all that stuff, I was touring like crazy. Back in that time, not many people were doing theaters and arenas. There was only a few people, and now it's like, fucking everybody does. When I go on tour, I'm like, Who's Alton Brown, the chef? He's playing the Deepak Center in Durham? He's just chopping food up and people are coming. Everybody's on tour, dude.

There'll be a dude Julianing a carrot for 11,000 people.

Yes. You're like, What? What's happening?

Dude, Is it Cake? That TV show, Is it Cake? Is going on tour? I'm like, Who gives a fuck?

Yes. Is it Cake? Tour. You're like, Wait, that's what I'm competing with.

People in the stands of binoculars trying to figure out if it's cake.

It was not like this.

At 70 yards. It's ridiculous.

It's not like this. Who cares? It was not like this.

Who cares if it's fonded?

It was not like this. In that time, there was a whole podcast boom. Everybody found an audience. You You cut out the middleman of Netflix or whatever. People are putting stuff on YouTube, and now all these people are touring, and there's been this massive boom. I, during that time, made my TV series, worked on these movies, and have stepped away.

But now you're coming back. You're touring again.

Yeah, I'm touring again now, and it's been so fun. I've had a great time, but I'm also like, damn, dude, this travel, it hits me in a different way. Yeah, you see October 23rd, I'm getting stressed. I'm like, I can't go to Temecula. I got to cancel Temecula. San Diego, oh, God. Modesta. Monterey. Oh, God. At least I can hub out of LA. Oh, no. Then I got to fly to Cincinnati on the 13th. Oh, God. Then we got to I'm going to lie to Louisville. Tsa is going to be closed. There's going to be like one air traffic controller. Then I'm probably going to go down on my way to St. Louis. That's going to be delayed.

Indianapolis will be fun, dude.

Indianapolis. Then I go see my family in Charlotte. That's nice. I love Asheville. Asheville is a great town, and Savannah is a great town. Savannah is beautiful, too. No, I love the show, and I love being in the different cities because when you tour, you form a relationship with these cities, and you're happy to go back.

For sure. You're excited to go back. You're excited to see like, Oh, look at this crowd. This one's different. This energy, this place is different.

Yeah. What's so cool is, and I think this is why people like to go to live standup, is like, even if you're watching a special, it's not the same as that show in that town, and it's really fun. For me, this tour has been fun because I haven't toured in a while, so it's a lot of stuff has happened. I've been married. Me and my wife are trying to have a kid. To go back to the thing we were talking about of doing too much, the movies, I feel like that comes from I have an idea and I have this vision of It sounds cheesy to say vision, but I have a vision of something I want to execute, and it's something I'm really excited about. I'm racing to be on set to do like, it could just be like, I'm writing something now and I have this one scene. I'm like, Oh, man, I just want to shoot that scene. I think this would be so... I got to get there. It's a long time to get there. Movies are so slow. You got to work with so many other people. It's a nightmare.

But I do it because I really love films and I want to make more films. But I do think I've realized recently, I've got to calm down. I think I've overestimated my ability to work. As I get older- You get burned out.

You get stressed. The stress builds.

I've seen friends that are burned out.

Oh, dude, you're looking at one of them. We're not even friends, but you're looking at somebody that's been burnt out, but we could maybe be friends.

I I hope so. Dude, we went deep here. This is deeper than I went on any other podcast. We talked about some heavy stuff. Yeah, in a great way. I love it. I think this is so much more- We talk about a lot of this stuff on here.

It's important. It's nice to- I really like it.

But no, I That burnout feeling, it's like- Bro, it's real.

I started shedding hair recently, dude. We had a freaking retired Boston detective who had some of the craziest stories, found a wiener on the sidewalk, and it was like a real who done it or whatever. Obviously, the person missing the wiener did It was pretty easy. It wasn't like, Knives Out. Actually, it was like, knives out. It's a long story. But anyway, oh, shit, I forgot what I was talking about.

We're talking about just the burnout. Oh, yeah.

The burnout is real. It happens, dude. Yeah. Started shedding hair, all that stuff.

It's tough to say I know, too, because you're having a moment right now, and I've had a moment, and people start telling you to do all this stuff. No one on your side of the business is going to be like, Dude, you got to chill. You got to take some rest. No one ever says that. They're like, Well, that's a great opportunity. You should do it. You're like, Well, that's a great opportunity. I should do it. When I was younger, I could do all that stuff. When I look back at schedules and stuff I did, I'm like, How did I do all this? I can't do it anymore at this age. It's a different thing. I'm married now. I've been away from my wife a lot. I don't feel nice about it sometimes.

Well, look, I have a suggestion that'll help you relax. Go watch Good Fortune. Go with your wife. My own movie? I'm not even joking. My own movie? Go sit and watch You'll like it. You guys will laugh. You'll get to spend some time together. It's good. I do know it's out October 17th. I do want to remind everybody about that.

Yeah, thank you.

I feel lucky you get to be in London. One of my favorite musicians, James Blake, lives over there. Dermot Kennedy is a He's in the United Kingdom. He's a guy that I really love who actually is coming in town soon. Yeah, I would love to get to live over there sometimes. People feel very...

It's nice you're a little bit... I mean, you probably feel this here, too. You're a little bit away from the circus.

Oh, yeah. I feel totally good. And the circus is dissolved. The circus is-It's a different thing.

You don't really need to be there anymore.

They're finding new places. There's new mini-circuses popping up. Yeah.

But does Nashville become in a circus?

No, I don't think so. Not too much. It still feels small There's a lot of people moving here and a lot of stuff going on, but it still feels pretty small.

No, I feel like that in London, that I'm away from things. Whenever I go back to LA, I start feeling like, Oh, my God, I'm falling behind. I need to do this because you hear about it. I've just made this. I'm working on it. I'm like, Oh, shit. What am I doing? I'm not doing anything.

You've done so much, dude. From television to... I know you had that series I watched for a while. It was on Netflix. It was just you.

Yeah, Master of None.

That was Master of None? Yeah. The book that you wrote, I know about dating and the struggling of love. That was 10 years ago, too. You've done Let me tell you this. If nobody ever tells you, you've done enough.

No. But finishing the movie is a big deal, and I'm glad I did it because it took a minute to get it done, and I'm really proud of it and proud of the work that I did, my whole team did, all the actors did, and I'd love to make more. But yeah, I definitely, I hear you. You've done a lot.

That's what I mean. I didn't mean enough. I didn't mean enough.

No, I know what you mean. I appreciate it.

I think your sister would be so proud of you. What was her name again? I want to say it one more time. Nafis. Nafis? It's such a pretty name. How do you spell it?

N-a-f-e-e-z.

Nafis.

I'm so glad we talked about that because I feel like I'm here with some people that work with me, and they're like, Wait, what?

Because I- I think when we say people's names out loud, people that have been a part of our lives, even when we're talking about if you wanted to say something to Lucian, I think when we say people's names, they feel that wherever they are, that is a felt thing. Because otherwise, why would we feel it? You know what I'm saying?

No, it's bringing their... It's putting them out there.

Yeah, and I believe it's like... I believe they feel it wherever they are, they feel it. I think if you're here for this long, you definitely keep an anchor locked in.

I mean, the other person I was going to mention, and tell me, I don't want you to run late for whatever But the other person I was thinking of when I was talking about Lucian was, have you ever heard of Manny that ran the Comedy Cellar? Manny Dworamun was the owner of the Comedy Cellar. His son, Noam's there now.

Oh, yeah, I know Noam.

Yeah. So Noam's dad is Manny. Okay. First time I ever did comedy was at the Comedy Cellar. They had a new talent night, which doesn't even exist anymore. Now, they just have 10 Comedy Cellars and 10 shows. But this was back in the day, they had a talent night at 6: 00. You'd bring a couple of friends, and they'd give you stage time. I did that. I was 18 years old. Summer of my freshman year in college. I didn't do good at it. I did well. My The year was terrible, but I did well because I was very comfortable on stage and public speaking, and I was just funny, and it worked. I came back and did it again. I did a couple of open mics and had a reality check. I'm like, Oh, fuck, this is really hard. Then the third time I did stand-up. Third time I ever did stand-up was again at the Comedy Cellar. It was one of these new talent nights. For some reason, this crowd and me, it just-It didn't go well. No, it went super well. Oh, fuck.

All your stories in it, they go good.

They went nuts. I said something at the end. I was like, Oh, by the way, whatever We perform where we have to bring a certain number of friends. I'm running out of friends. So if you want to come, come see, say hi backstage or whatever. I was just being serious, and they were all just losing it. And Manny saw this. And he said, There's Manny. And he goes, he basically came up and it was like some old Hollywood thing. He was like, You're ready for the big room? I done stand up three times. There's no way I was ready to perform at the hardest comedy. This is like, Comedy Cellar where it's like, Atel, Géraldo, Jim Norton. He's like, You're ready for the big room? I would show up there and they would put me on late at night, almost like a late night. It was really odd because I shouldn't have been doing it. I was just so green and I was doing it. Eventually, Estee, who's the She famously runs a Comedy Story, Passage comics. She's like, Okay, you go on. I went on, and she was like, Yeah, you can't be performing here.

Push you back down? Yeah, she was like, You can't be doing this. She's fucking tough. I was like, A little kid. She's so tough. She was like, You can't be doing this. You're not ready. I was like, Okay. Then now, again, one of the M. E, Masscré Garden, whatever. This, to me, is the coolest thing is that I can perform at the Comedy Cellar and just drop in and they'll just let me do material and perform. Then the crowd goes nuts and knows who I am. That's the craziest thing to me. That's crazy. That's above everything else. My biggest dream, I've told people is that I'm just 90 years old and I drop into the Comedy Seller and maybe a couple of people knew who I am, but that I'm able to fucking hold my own. But anyway, I was there at the Comedy Seller one night, and Me and Essie were talking about this, and she was like, Manny saw you whenever you were really young, and he must be up there smiling now seeing all you've done. Yeah, that made me smile. I wasn't super close with Manny, but he was another guy.

Before Lucian, he even saw me and just said something.

What's a reminder, I think, for anybody that has been in a field for a while of when you take a moment to connect with somebody that's just coming into it, that it could have an effect. That's a nice reminder.

It means the world to them, and you don't realize because I think we're all in our own head and don't realize.

I mean, yeah, especially when you're young, there's one person having to believe like, Oh, good job, just little things like that. I'm still grateful. It reminded me that Neil Brennan and Amy Schumer are the ones that helped me get past at the Comedy Cellar. Oh, wow. I've only performed there probably six, seven times, maybe 10. But I walked in the other night and I was so nervous like, You want to go up? I was like, No way. I'm not freaking going off, dude. But I think some of that's just places you used to be in. Aziz, I got to go, man. Thank you so much. Oh, man.

This was such a great conversation. This has been cool. I really enjoyed it. We I thought about so many interesting things and really some heavy stuff, but I thought it was great, and I'm so glad we had the opportunity to do it.

I appreciate it, man. I think it's exciting that you get to live in London and have a new experience. It sounds like you've had a lot of unique experiences, and that's such a gift. God's had a lot of grace, it seems like, in your whole just ability to be creative. Man, thank you for sharing that with us.

Oh, thanks, man. Thank you for having me.

You bet. And best of luck with the film, dude. Out October 17th, so this week, I think. All right, everybody, be good.

Thanks so much. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take...

When I was there, you had to have a knife. One of you has got to take turns carrying it up your rectum.

Wait, it's up your butt?

That's the prison wallet. You'll never leave home without.

You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

I'm Mariana Vanzeller, and after reporting on Black Markets for my emu-winning National Geographic show, Traffic, I'm launching a podcast. You're getting emotional on me. Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows. The Hidden Third is out now with new episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe at youtube.

Com/marianavanzeller. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.