Aziz Ansari Is From A Red State, Too

- Jada Yuan

Where is Aziz’s phone?

That seems to be the most frequently asked question on the set of Master of None’s season two, most frequently by Aziz Ansari, the show’s star and co-creator. “I try not to keep my phone on me because I need to keep all distractions out of my face when I’m trying to do all of this shit,” he says. So he makes a point of handing it off to his assistant, Jessica, whose main job seems to be to keep Ansari’s phone charged and to run across this Brooklyn soundstage and fetch it whenever he wants it, which turns out to be always, and then to remind him that she’s already given it to him, which also is pretty often, and then to take it away again.

“Hey, Jess, do you have that phone?” Ansari asks for the second time in the first ten minutes of our acquaintance.

“I just gave it to you,” says Jess.

Ansari glances down at his hand to find his phone. “Oh, you did! Oh, shit!”

There’s a text waiting for him: “We’re ready to start shooting ASAP.’ Jesus!” he says and hands the phone back to Jess.

Ansari spent seven seasons knocking out jokes as the ridiculous striver Tom Haverford on NBC’s Parks and Recreation and two years ago joined the ranks of stand-ups who’ve sold out Madison Square Garden. But this Netflix series is the most personal work of his life, and today he has reason to be frazzled. Not only is he directing this episode but he’s also in almost all of it, as Master of None’s hopeless-romantic hero, Dev Shah, who’s essentially Ansari, just less successful: a fledgling New York actor, living off a Go-Gurt commercial he once did, looking for love and some tasty tortellini.