Overnight sensations rarely happen in stand-up comedy. Jerry Seinfeld plied his trade in comedy clubs for a good two decades before mass success became a possibility. Chris Rock failed to distinguish himself as a Saturday Night Live cast member and had to go back to the drawing board, honing an entirely new act. Louis CK was admired by fellow comics but failed to really connect with audiences until he had kids and started talking about them. No wonder that Aziz Ansari – best known to UK audiences as the workshy, swagged-out, would-be entrepreneur Tom Haverford from Parks & Recreation – seems mildly astounded by his rapid ascent to the top of the comedy tree.
“I grew up in South Carolina in a really small town and the idea that I was going to be on TV just seemed preposterous,” he says. “But when I was in New York going to school, I went to a comedy club and I thought: ‘I know how to do that.’ And then all the other stuff, acting and everything, just fell in my lap from doing well at stand-up.” By the time Ansari graduated from New York University in 2004, he was already packing them in at the city’s influential Upright Citizens Brigade venue. TV work, movie roles and stand-up specials followed in quick succession, all of them cementing his reputation as a fast-talking scene stealer with an outsized confidence that occasionally betrays an impish innocence. His live following expanded to the point that, last month, he played two sell-out dates at Madison Square Garden.
When I show up to meet Ansari at a nondescript dive on Hollywood Boulevard, he’s sitting alone and unpestered by midweek drinkers. He’s a slight 5ft 6in with alert darting eyes and a high-pitched southern accent that speeds up as he warms to his topic. His previous TV specials – 2010’s Intimate Moments For A Sensual Evening and 2012’s Dangerously Delicious – were crammed with stories about his pop-culture-clueless family members, and accounts of encounters with Kanye West and 50 Cent. But Ansari’s real-life hobnobbing with Kanye and Jay Z (he cameos in the Otis video) have created a perception he’s keen to dispel.
“I hate it when people try to pigeonhole what you do: ‘Oh, you tell stories about pop culture; oh, you talk about being 30; oh, you’re the relationship comic.’ I thought: ‘Can I go deeper inside of me and really talk about things?’” One of his unexpected new routines is about factory farming and the food industry. “It’s a weird conundrum because what are you going to do?,” he asks. “Dedicate your whole life to protesting it? There’s one day of protest and the people who make the money are like, ‘You’re doing one day where you’re marching outside? That’s really cute. We have a whole building of people working every day non-stop.’”
Another of Ansari’s ruminations concerns the hot-button issue of everyday sexism. “What I realise happens is that sometimes you’re in mixed company and a man might say something sexist and people laugh it off because it’s easier. I talk about that in my stand-up: I say you should call the guy out or shit on him for saying it. You would if he said something racist.”
Does he think that audiences might be turned off by his new, less cuddly direction? “I’m 31 now,” he shrugs. “What I talk about is going to change. The artists I like, they have an essence but it changes. That’s Radiohead playing now, a perfect example. They have a certain thing and they keep changing it. That’s more interesting to me than every special I put out being about my cousin Harris.”
Ansari is an affable bar companion. When he discovers that I hail from Glasgow, he asks about the local dance club and label Optimo, about which I erroneously claim extensive knowledge (and am subsequently revealed as a sham when he keeps talking about it). Only when it comes to considering his current fame that his conversation turn a little sombre. “I just really fucking dedicated myself to stand-up so I try to be grateful and very aware,” he says. “It’s not like I’m thinking maybe I’ll play the Garden again next year. People might not give a shit. Next year, I’ve got to write a show that’s even funnier than the last one, that’s talking about even more interesting things.
“When you have that mentality, the other shit falls into place.”
Aziz Ansari performs at the Eventim Apollo, W6, 30 Nov
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