Interview with Aasif Mandvi from Million Dollar Arm

Aasif Mandvi was once a Street Performer at Disney. Now, he is one of  the funny co-stars in Disney’s Million Dollar Arm!

We got the chance to interview Aasif while in LA for the Million Premiere and he had us rolling with laughter for most of the interview!

You may remember him from The Daily Show, The Amazing Spider Man 2, Internship, among other things, and this isn’t the last you are going to see him or hear his name.

AASIF MANDVI: I was a Street Performer at the Disney/MGM Studios and now I am in a Disney Movie so it’s a very, very different experience.

There’s less Catering involved. You don’t get a Trailer, you don’t get  Makeup and Hair, nothing.  It was great and Disney/MGM Studios was  my first job out of College so it was kind of an amazing experience.

It was sort of my first Acting job, professional Acting job and it was really fun. We opened the MGM Studios back in ’89 and did these Street performing Characters.

It was a great place to learn Comedy and learn Improv and stuff like that. It was amazing and it was right. Funny where I started and I hope this is not where I end, but it’s where I started, you know. Came full circle, right?

Most of the time actors are playing the role of a totally made up character. Then there are the amazing chances to portray a real life person, like Aasif did in Million Dollar Arm.

We had to find out what that was like for him and what kind of inspiration he got from the Ash, the real person.

AASIF MANDVI: Well, I know Ash and I’ve known him from before I did this movie. We have mutual friends. He’s not married. He doesn’t have kids. He’s very different from the real Ash.

I didn’t really worry about trying to portray him at all. I just created a character for the purposes of the film because the real Ash is more like JB in the sense, He’s kind of like a Single Guy, you know, like he’s a tough guy in San Francisco.

But it was interesting to play someone who actually is a real person. I’d never done that before and now people always want to take pictures of the two of us together and he’s thrilled because like I said, we’ve known each other for a long time. It’s exciting for him to have somebody he knows actually portray him in the film so it was good.

Like almost everyone in the film and everyone at home going to see the move, Aasif didn’t know the story of Million Dollar Arm before the movie.

That is just one of the reasons I am glad Disney made this film. This is a story that needs to be told and they do it very well!

AASIF MANDVI: No I’d never heard of this and I’m also not a huge Sports guy so I didn’t know about the story at all. When I heard about it, because I knew Ash and then there was this whole thing of this movie being made called “Million Dollar Arm” with these two.

Ash was the guy who got them to America and I knew all of it through my friends….that my friend Ash was involved in making this movie. That’s how I found out about it.

Aasif’s character, Ash, was the funny man next to Jon Hamm’s straight man. We wondered what that was like for him to play this role alongside Hamm’s character.

AASIF MANDVI: I think he’s funny, but he’s also the grounded Character. He’s the one that is the counter point to Jon Hamm’s Playboy Lothario Character. I like that aspect of it and I also feel like, it was an interesting Character to see.

A South Asian Sports Agent….because I don’t know any, you know. I’m sure there are, but it was an interesting Character to play, somebody I’ve never played before so I felt that was kind of fun. then I got to work with Jon Hamm every day who is dreamy so……..

When I think back to the movies I love, there are usually scenes that stand out to me. Whether they were really funny, really sad, or had an amazing message, certain scenes stick with me.

One of the scenes in Million Dollar Arm that sticks with me is when Brenda has to take Rinku and Dinesh to the hospital for stitches to a finger. Words are exchanged and feelings are crushed and it’s a turning moment for Jon Hamm’s character. Knowing my favorite scene, I wondered what Aasif’s  favorite scene to film was and why.

AASIF MANDVI: My favorite scene to film……it was really actually fun going to India and shooting. Having been born there and having family there and having visited India many times, it’s a whole different experience when you go with an American Film Crew to India.

Actually, the best way to see India is to be in the bubble of a big Hollywood Production. It was just an amazing experience to go to India and for me I got to visit family. I got to see the Taj Mahal, which I’ve always wanted to and never had. And now I got to do it on Disney’s dime so you know, so it was kind of great. Yeah.

Everyone else that we had interviewed from Million Dollar Arm had talked highly of working with the cast on the film. We chatted a little with Aasif about working with the guys on set.

AASIF MANDVI: With Madhur and Suraj? They’re great. I’m a lot older than them so they sort of became like little Brothers to me. Suraj is really nice and easy going. Mad was kind of a pain in the ass.

So I had that very sort of familial relationship with the two of them. It was really fun to get to work with other Indian Actors, which is so rare. Usually you’re the only South Asian Actor on a set of a Hollywood Movie or something, but this was kind of nice.

Then also, Pitobash who’s so great. He played Amit, the little guy. He was so great and it was all really a great experience. Everyone was so great to work with.

Aasif’s character in Million Dollar Arm has twins and I understood his emotions in those scenes. Life with twins is crazy and speaking from experience, it can be easier to adapt to them and their needs than to fit them into yours. We had to find out what is like for him to work with babies, as some of those scenes look pretty grueling to say the least.

AASIF MANDVI: Oh the Twins. So they had two sets of twins, but you can’t tell because they’re Indian and probably look alike. But, if you watch closely, you see that they’re actually two sets of different twins.

The twins that I’m feeding in the kitchen are not the same twins that I’m holding on the Porch. What happened on the porch was…..so we’ve got this, you know, two sets of Indian parents who have these two sets of twins and the  poor things are hiding off in the corner like new kids would, and  just cry. They would just cry.

The scene was not about these kids crying, and Craig Gillespie the Director, was like, you know, kids cry, so let him just cry because there’s no way we can stop them from crying. So we just used it so they would. Craig’s theory was like every time we see Ash and his children, his children are just screaming. That’s just the reality of his life. In the bed, they’re crying.

They weren’t supposed to be crying. In the kitchen, they’re crying. Then, the piece de resistance is that on the Porch, the kids were again, crying and I’m supposed to be holding them, and the kid is literally screaming for his Mother. He’s just like, I don’t care about your stupid Movie, I want to be with my Mom. Finally I said listen, I can’t do this anymore.

This kid….there’s snot coming out of him and he’s crying. He’s just a mess, you know. Craig was like, Listen, we’ve got to get this shot, OK? We need this shot. I don’t care how much, just let the kid cry. I don’t care. Just grab him, walk out onto the porch, we get the shot, we’re done.

We’re out of here. So I’m like Fine, OK. They roll Action, I grab this kid, it’s like pulling cheese off a Pizza. It’s literally like I grab this kid. He’s holding on to me, the hair, the thing, and I grab him like Come on, Come on Sweetie, come on.

We go running onto the porch and I’m standing there getting the shot. Then suddenly he looks at me and just puked. It’s all over my clothes. And twice, he did it twice. It’s in the Movie. You can see it. So like it’s totally real.

You see me go from being an Actor, I mean like a character in a movie to being an actor and just going like, somebody’s P.A. I take the kid, I’m holding him out here like an Actor who’s suddenly been puked on and the kid is just puking. There’s puke everywhere. It’s all in my clothes, in my hair. It was just…it was yeah. But we got the shot.

Wonder what Aasif is up to next? It involves a new series and a book and both sound really really good!

AASIF MANDVI: I’m actually doing an HBO Series called “The Brink” with Jack Black and Tim Robbins that comes out next year. It’s a comedy about the end of the world and the brink of Armageddon. A Geo-Political Comedy.

It’s seen through the eyes of 3 Departments of US Government so State Department, Foreign Service, and the Military, but it’s a Comedy. A half hour and it’s sort of like Dr. Strangelove. The stuff I have done on the Daily Show for years is sort of in that vein of satirical Political sort of stuff.

So this is kind of in keeping with that stuff, but it’s from a Narrative standpoint. And I have a book coming out at the end of the year. The book is called “No Land’s Man” and it’s basically stories of my life from growing up as a kid in England, to moving to Florida and being a High School Student in Florida, and then coming to New York, and my career.  It’s sort of essays, humorous essays that are kind of Sedarisesque sort of stories. That’s coming out in November.

Aasif’s Book, No Land’s Man: A Perilous Journey through Romance, Islam, and Brunch will release on October 14th and you can pre-order it now.

Knowing the Million Dollar Arm portrays the Indian lifestyle, and knowing that Aasif was born in India and has family there, we wanted to know how this story being told wold impact those in India that get a chance to see the film.

AASIF MANDVI: I don’t know how it’ll impact people in India. I’ll be curious to see. I mean, I think it has an emotional element to it. There’s an Indian kind of pride sort of thing about it, you know. But I don’t know how people will take to it. I know for example, when “Slumdog Millionaire” came out, a lot of people in India didn’t like the Movie.

They were sort of like, Oh this is India for Western people. Sometimes there’s a kind of an exoticism of India,like the Poverty, you know what I mean? But I think this Movie actually takes a really great realistic approach to what it is. Like that scene with Vivek and JB where he’s talking about the Posters.

That is so the experience of the average Indian person in India. What I liked about it was it’s a Middle Class Indian person’s life in India, which is like dealing with the bureaucracy and red tape of the system. Everything in India like that makes it harder than it really should be. I think there’s interesting observations about India that are very true in this film. I’ll be curious to see how it plays to the masses over there.

I shared in my Million Dollar Arm Review what I took away from the movie and Aasif also shared what he hopes you will take away from Million Dollar Arm as well.

AASIF MANDVI: What I hope people will take the most is that this is a story is a very American story. It’s a very American Dream kind of story and so I think that the idea of possibility, the idea that anything is possible. I was talking to Rinku about it, the real Rinku, and I was saying do you feel proud?

He was really sort of philosophical about it and it’s just what happened to me…..I went to this Audition and this thing happened and it is a story for the world. But for me, it’s just my life, it’s just what happened and now what I’m really interested in, is being the best Baseball Player that I can be.