Aasif Mandvi has been busy since he left his regular correspondent post on “The Daily Show.” From HBO’s “The Brink” to the upcoming “A Series of Unfortunate Events” Netflix series, he’s been enjoying an assortment of roles.
His latest is in “Mother’s Day,” which hits screens Friday. There’s one downside to all the Hollywood gigs — they take Mandvi, 50, away from his beloved NYC. Here’s what we learned from a recent chat with the performer.
Current politics makes him wish he was still a regular on “The Daily Show”“There is a weird sick sense of I wish I was still a regular on ‘The Daily Show’ [so that] in some way we could skewer this election.”
The “theater nerd” in him is pumped to be part of “Unfortunate Events” “It’s one of those projects that’s so fun because it’s almost like shooting a ‘Harry Potter’ movie or something. The theater nerd in me gets excited about putting on costumes and doing larger than life characters in this world that is otherworldly.”
Aasif is addicted to NYC “Whenever I’m away from New York, I miss it. … It sounds like a cliché, but when you go away, I’ve spent so much time in LA recently, and you start to feel like you’re speaking like a cliché, but it’s really true that there’s a kind of energy and a kind of rhythm to life in New York, that you get kind of addicted to. Then, want to get back to. New York is my favorite drug.”
His fave restaurant is in the East Village“Babu Ji — because there’s no great Indian food in LA. I don’t think there’s anything comparable to what you have in New York.”
Going out in NYC is better than in LA “I do miss the energy of being able to meet friends very quickly and be able to go downtown and that lifestyle. In LA, you feel like you have to drive an hour to meet anybody anywhere. I never leave my apartment in LA, and in New York, I’m never home.”
