All You Need to Know About Golden Globe Winner Aziz Ansari

Assured, authentic, funny - Aziz Ansari is a comedic force to be reckoned with.

Aziz Ansari wins a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy series for Netflix’s ‘Master of None’.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

Aziz Ansari became the first Asian male to win a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy series as he bagged the accolade for Master of None this year. He was previously nominated for the award in 2016, but didn’t make the cut. But 2017 seemed to be the year of this comic since it saw him sweep away two Emmys for his work on the show, making him a comedy auteur to reckon with. He even hosted Saturday Night Live, the day after President Trump's inauguration in January.

Vociferous about his political opinions, in one of his op-eds, before Trump came to power, he was candid about how he was scared for his family, since prejudice was hitting new levels.

The co-creator and star of the Netflix series kickstarted his career with standup comedy in New York in mid-2000s. Rolling Stone even included him in their annual Hot List as their choice for the Hot Standup.

Best known for his performance as Tom Haverford in, Parks and Recreation, Ansari is no run-of-the-mill comedian. On The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actors Roundtable, he credited Amy Poehler for comedic acting and running the sets of Parks and Recreation #likeaboss.

When the first season of the series came out, The New York Times called the show "the year's best comedy straight out of the gate" and praised its genre-crossing appeal.

With a flair for ‘sad-sack’ humour, Ansari made the emotional landscape of an inept person continually blundering despite good intentions, tangible. Master of None makes a case for how the most personal chronicles can be universal.

On The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actors Roundtable, Ansari revealed that he finally found the secret to success in Hollywood with creating his own show.

“You kind of have to make your own way. No one would have given me a show like [Master of None], no one would have believed I could have done that. It definitely would have gone to some white guy. If you look at people who have really done interesting stuff, they’re people who make their own doors all the time, and then hopefully, something opens.”

Aziz Ansari at The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actors Roundtable

Mining mundane life for all its pathos and jubilations, Master of None, a social satire that empathetically takes on racism, sexism and other relevant issues, is a series about a 30-year-old actor’s personal and work life in New York. The Thanksgiving episode in Season 2 (written by Lena Waithe and Aziz Ansari) garnered admiration for portraying ‘diversity’ sensitively. While the episode New York I Love You, flows like a flawless ode to the city, it is exemplary in marvellously stripping a place of its stereotypes. The second season begins with a homage to Vittorio De Sica’s mournful 1948 Italian classic, Bicycle Thieves, as it unfurls in black and white in Italy in the first episode.

The first season of the show offers an authentic take on growing up as a South Asian first-generation Indian-American actor in the U.S. struggling to bridge the cultural gap between himself and his parents. Having been born to Tamil Muslim parents from Tamil Nadu, in South Carolina, Ansari brings a unique and inclusive immigrant perspective to Master of None.

Aziz Ansari with his parents who play themselves on ‘Master of None’.(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

What’s more, his folks feature on the show as themselves. His father, Shoukath Ansari who has made longer appearances on the show than his mother, captured the imagination of many Americans for his complete lack of guile on screen as mouthed dialogues with his South Indian accent.

In Season 1, the episode Parents borrowed from Shoukath’s actual life. It weaved details like his employment in the zipper factory in an Indian village and his experience as an Indian in a dominantly white American medical practice.

“My dad is a practicing gastroenterologist; my mom works at the office. When they come to do the series, they’re using their vacation time to help me. My mom doesn’t even like acting on the show. She’s really just doing it because she loves me very much. She hates acting. Before the second season, when we announced the second season, she’s like, “OK, this season the mom character’s on vacation or she’s just gone.”“And I was like, “She can’t be on vacation the whole time.” She’s like, “No, maybe she’s at a wedding sometimes.” She just didn’t want to be a part of it. She did it because she loves me and my brother is also heavily involved with the show. It’s a really special thing that we get to do this together....And after the [first] season aired, my dad came to New York and we went on Stephen Colbert’s show together. ... And we went out to dinner afterwards, and he was telling me, ... “The reason I’m acting in the show and doing all of this is just to spend more time with you and to see you.”

Aziz Ansari, in one of his interviews to NPR.

Though the actor and comedian grew up in the American South, he was raised on a diet comprising spicy curry. In on his articles on coming to India (in 2016) to make sense of ‘his place in the world’, he wrote, Perhaps the best illustration of my split cultural identity was in the food I ate as a child. When my mother wasn’t preparing chicken korma or biryani, I was eating Southern staples cooked by Mrs. Beulah, our African-American housekeeper. One day, it was fish curry and rice, the next it was chicken and dumplings.

Sublime culinary references on his show serve as markers of how he understands cultures and grapples with his dual identity as an immigrant through the prism of food.

The actor-comedian has also written a book with sociologist, Eric Klinenberg called, Modern Romance: An Investigation, about the comedic pitfalls of dating in the modern world.

Aziz Ansari not only shoulders the mantle of a comedic force with the streak of an auteur but he shines a light on the need for writers and creators to be more sensitive and au courant. Observational comedy/content is most emotionally resonant when the narratives are plucked from real life.