Aziz Ansari is back

BY: Matt Elisofon

If Aziz Ansari is a “Master of None” what in the hell does that make the rest of us?

The multitasking writer, actor, and comedian was born in 1983 to Indian Tamil Muslim parents in South Carolina, but knew from an early age that the southern lifestyle was not for him. “Nothing cool was going on,’ he explained in an interview with NPR. “I just wanted to leave.” He would get his chance in college, moving to New York to study marketing at NYU. Soon Ansari started performing stand-up, and in 2005 won a Jury Award at the U.S Comedy Festival and was tapped by Rolling Stone as “One to Watch.”

But his skills and talents didn’t end with stand-up. Plugged into the UCB community in New York, Ansari formed Human Giant, a sketch group that gained enough notoriety to get a two season run on MTV before Aziz moved on to greener pastures. Literally.

Following a semi-recurring role on Scrubs, Ansari got his big break as the underachieving Tom Haverford on Parks and Recreation. The show, along with a couple of knockout stand-up specials, landed him his own Netflix comedy series, Master of None, which earned him and his writing partner Alan Yang an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, and made Ansari a household name. Even his research book, a comedic look at finding love in this unpredictable time of technology, “Modern Romance: An Investigation,” became a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

So while Ansari might be a jack-of-all-trades, he’s also–when it comes to writing and performing at least–a master of some.