Hasan Minhaj talks show business, being American

South Asians made huge strides in American television in 2015. From Priyanka Chopra (ABC’s Quantico) to Aziz Ansari (Netflix’s Master of None) and Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project), Desi celebs have hit it big with U.S. audiences. That’s especially true for Hasan Minhaj, one of the newest comedic correspondents on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Hired for The Daily Show in 2014 by then host Jon Stewart, Hasan also has a new one-man show, Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King, which delves into what it means to grow up first-generation Indian–American Muslim in a small Californian town. He recently spoke with New York City blog Gothamist about his show business experiences, working with The Daily Show, and being Muslim in America.

 On his audition for The Daily Show

Bill Maher on his show did a thing where he was extremely Islamophobic, and it's great how racist people work like clockwork. And I was just like, "Amazing!" And, coincidentally, Ben Affleck was on the show that day, there was this clip that went extremely viral about how Ben Affleck kind of stood up for Muslims and was like, "Hey, you can't just put them in internment camps. We did that to the Japanese and it was a really bad idea, Bill.”

And I fell in love with him. I fell in love with that little butt chin he has, and I was like, "Goddamit, Ben, you may not be the hero we want, but you're the hero the Muslim world needs." I was so happy I forgave him for Gigli. That clip just won me over, man. And I wrote this piece called "Batman vs. Bill Maher" and I did it at the desk with Jon and he offered me the job on the spot, which is just surreal.

On his identity

My mom works at the [U.S. Veterans Administration]; she's been working at the V.A. for 15-plus years, and yet she's helping so many veterans coming back from brown, Muslim countries and my mom treats them. It's this weird–sometimes I feel torn. It's this dual identity. I'm so proud to be American and at the same time I disagree with our foreign policy. How do I bridge those two things?

On his show, Homecoming King

It's an exploration of what I call the new brown America, the first-generation experience of what a lot of kids go through growing up in the United States of America … It really resonated with a lot of people and kind of took on a life of its own.