You’ve been on “The Daily Show†since 2014, but you became much more visible after hosting the White House correspondents’ dinner earlier this year. In that performance, you said that nobody else wanted this gig â€" why was that? It just became this hot potato that nobody wanted to touch. When I got the call, I was like: “We’re 19 days away. No one wanted this part.†Larry Wilmore did it last year, and they asked him four and a half months before the announcement came out. When I called Larry to tell him, he said, “They just called you?â€
Be honest: How mad were you when Jon Stewart left the show so soon after hiring you? I was looking at how much rent was in New York, so I told him, “I just signed a lease!†But he’s such a calm, sage guy â€" he told me and the other new correspondents that everything was going to be all right, and he believed in us.
You were asked to not really roast the president during the W.H.C.D., but you obviously went after him a little bit. Was there someone who gave you the go-ahead, or did you just have to trust your own gut? I trusted my gut. I always knew that if I was cutting, but not cruel, I would be in the right. I don’t ridicule someone’s merit, or something that they can’t control. If I were to say, “Steve Bannon looks like a bunch of chicken cutlets stapled together†at a comedy club, everyone would be roaring, but to me, I’m like, How would I feel if someone was like, “Hasan Minhaj looks like a poop stain?â€
Your recent comedy special, “Homecoming King,†is about your high-school experience and your hopes that the world has progressed a little bit more since you were last there. The performance tells the story of your expecting to take a female friend to the prom, only to find that she had acquiesced to her parents’ desire that she go with someone who was white. A critic once said you seemed hung up on high school. To me, the issue isn’t “Oh, boo hoo, Hasan Minhaj couldn’t go to the prom with Bethany Reed.†The real question I have is â€" given that story and given where we are as a country â€" could 2017 Hasan Minhaj go to the prom with Bethany Reed?
What’s the answer? I don’t know. I think about that same question a lot. I think about a kid in high school â€" say, the kid’s name is Ali Sheikh or something â€" and he wants to take a girl or a guy to the prom, but their parents open up the newspaper and it says, “3 Killed, 28 Injured in Terrorist Attack,†and they go, “We just don’t know.â€
What were you like in high school? I was good at speech and debate and academics. I should’ve stayed in my lane, but I kept trying out for the basketball team. I thought I would make the N.B.A.
When did that dream end? When I was 17. I had been cut from the basketball team every year. But I was like: “I can turn it around! Michael Jordan made it!†You see it a lot of times â€" you’ll have an athlete that you love, and then they’ll be like, “I also want to rap,†and you’re like, “Don’t do that.†I was that kid.
Was there anything that you included in the special that gave you pause, because it might be too embarrassing? I talk about my first kiss â€" based on the way I was raised, in an Indian household that watches Bollywood, when you have your first kiss, you’re like, “Oh, we’re going to get married now.†It was this weird Bollywood fantasy where it’s like, “Now we’ve kissed, we’re going to be transported to the mountains of Aspen, she’s going to be behind a tree, I’m going to run after her.†All of a sudden, life became this song.
Do you feel fortunate that right now there is such a hunger for the kind of identity-politics-infused comedy that you bring? Or would you prefer to be sort of liberated from the subject matter altogether? I think perspective is a necessary, amazing thing. What I love about comedy is that we’re this group of weirdos, and the only language that matters is “Are you funny?†And it really is this oddly cool American idea where comedy’s the marketplace of ideas. May the best idea win.
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