Comedian and actor Aziz Ansari is breaking new ground with his Netflix series “Master of None,” which premiered this month to rave reviews. Ansari created the 10-episode comedy series and stars as Dev, an aspiring Indian-American actor in New York who faces typecasting during auditions and meeting the expectations of his immigrant parents.
The storyline is not only loosely autobiographical, but for Dev's father, Ansari has cast none other than his own dad, Dr. Shoukath Ansari, a gastroenterologist at Sandhills Regional Medical Center in Hamlet, N.C. He also cast his mother, Fatima Ansari. Critics are saying they're stealing the show.
On “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the younger Ansari said he wrote the characters based on his parents, but he could not find actors who could portray them well.
“I wanted those characters to feel real,” he said. “Because sometimes when you see immigrant parents on TV and film, they're just very broad, they're just vehicles for these kind of hacky, ethnic jokes.”
Ansari later quipped that his dad is getting plenty of unexpected publicity and has even talked about doing more projects.
“I asked him: What would you want to do? And he was like: Doing the show is too much work. How about something shorter, like a commercial?”
