A&O Winter Comedian and Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari took some time to call North by Northwestern from New York and give us the lowdown on how he feels about Chet Haze, Tom Haverford’s latest business ventures and saying dirty things in nice places.
Has your cousin, [Weinberg sophomore] Darwish [Gani], told you any exciting stories about Northwestern? Are you expecting a lot from us?
Not really. I think Darwish just reads his books and goes on Facebook all the time. I don’t think he gets into too much trouble. His exciting stories are like, “Dude, I ate chicken nuggets at the cafeteria.”
So you posted about Chet Haze on your Tumblr. Are you a fan?
Oh yeah, he goes to Northwestern. I saw that “White and Purple” video that was getting passed around. His Twitter is pretty entertaining as well. I’ll just say that.
What are you most excited for on this season of Parks and Rec? Anything we should be looking out for?
There’s a couple that were really fun for me. There’s one where Tom starts his own liquor and it’s called Snake Juice, and it’s just a bunch of Red Bull, coffee and liquor. It’s disgusting, but it was a fun episode to do. And there’s another one where Tom is trying to, like, pitch a game show. He has a game show he’s trying to create and it’s called Know Your Boob. It’s like The Dating Game or whatever but it’s called Know Your Boob. And that was really fun. I thought that was such a perfect use of that character, that he would be the host of a game show. Those are some [episodes] I’m really looking forward to.
If there were a Tom Haverford pyramid of greatness, what would be on top?
Hmm. A Tom Haverford Pyramid of Greatness. It would probably be a photo of Jay-Z and Jamie Foxx holding hands.
Other than Parks and Rec, what are you working on right now?
I’m writing a couple movies. One of them is for Judd Apatow that my friend Jason [Woliner] and I are writing about two disgraced astronauts that have to go back to the moon to clear their name. There’s another one that my friend Harris [Wittels] from Parks is writing for me and Danny McBride called Olympic-Sized Asshole. It’s about two guys who are best friends who meet this guy who’s a super famous Olympic athlete, and the guy’s on the cover of Time magazine and everything and then he has a three way with both of our girlfriends at the same time. So we go crazy and try to get revenge.
I shot this movie called 30 Minutes or Less last summer with Jesse Eisenberg and Danny McBride that’s coming out in August. And I’m touring here and there. Hopefully we’ll record that in a special in March or April, and that’s about it.
So is there ever going to be a Raaaaaaaandy movie with Judd Apatow?
Well, that was one of three ideas we sold to him. Another one of the three was the astronaut movie, so that’s the one we’re working on right now.
You were at Carnegie Hall a couple days ago. How did it go?
It was insane — such a beautiful venue. You feel almost bad saying such disgusting things in such a prestigious place. But it was a lot of fun. I started doing stand up in New York, so it was really cool for me to go from doing tiny bars in New York to playing Carnegie Hall. It was pretty surreal.
What was it like to do stand-up in front of your parents?
You know, I didn’t see their faces — they sat, like, not in the front row, so I couldn’t watch their reactions when I said the most disgusting stuff. But they had a good time. They didn’t really say anything. They said, “Oh, a couple things were dirty,” or whatever, but I think they had a good time and I was really glad they were able to come. It was a lot of fun.
Will Northwestern be able to measure up to Carnegie Hall?
It’s not going to be as good as Carnegie Hall — I’m not going to try as hard. No, I’m just kidding. It’ll be great. I always enjoy colleges. They’re always fun crowds when you perform for college kids, so I think it’ll be a good time.