He's early. I'm not sure how early he got to Au Passage, a restaurant serving small plates (Aziz's choice) that's tucked away on a graffiti-riddled street in central Paris. But he beat me—and I was early. I found him leaning on a wall, alone. Not looking at his phone or speaking with the maître d'. In fact, his posture didn't project any of the standard anxiety one gets while waiting alone in a crowded place. After a short back-and-forth about whether the Gucci Princetown slippers I'm wearing are still cool (when it comes to matters of taste, Aziz has opinions on everything), we sit down, elbow to elbow with other Americans who are excited to overpay for a sliver of duck.
Watching the second season of Aziz's Netflix hit, Master of None, was like watching Kobe in a legacy-sealing playoff game. He just kept hitting shot after shot, each one more creative and impressive than the one before it. Season two has the black lesbian coming-out story.
It has eight minutes of silence. (It involves a deaf couple; you just have to watch it.) It has a 12-year-old Indian boy singing pitch-perfect D'Angelo. (It's Aziz's character, Dev, in a flashback.) Watching the show is to watch a popular American stand-up comic who sold out Madison Square Garden but wasn't exactly threatening Richard Pryor's throne evolve into a legit streaming-television auteur—the execution is that original, artful, and assured.
If there's any explanation for Aziz's total comfort at a small artisanal restaurant in a foreign city, it could be because this has become his comfort zone. Much has been made of the time Aziz spent in Italy before shooting part of season two in Modena, but Italy is the least of it. He lived here in Paris for a month. Went to Japan for a summer. Speaks a smattering of the languages. Who knows where he's plotting to move next?
But there's another possible explanation, too. Before meeting Aziz, I received a tip that he'd unplugged from everything but text messaging. He's off social media. He deleted the Internet browser from his phone and laptop. No e-mail, either. Technologically speaking, he's living in, like, 1999. Supposedly, anyway—I was a bit skeptical. I wanted to know: Did he unplug or “unplug”? Does he have an assistant sending him breaking news via messenger pigeon? Does he monitor his inbox for important e-mails but not reply directly? Is this just a really next-level Hollywood way to stunt after finding fame and fortune? And, most important, if it is true, has it made him happier?
Once dinner is over, Aziz and I will walk to La Grande Roue de Paris—the famous Ferris wheel on Place de la Concorde—and go for a spin. Here at Au Passage, it seems wise to let the famous foodie at the table take the lead in ordering the food. He asks if I want some wine, and I tell him I've never drunk or smoked. “You've never been curious,” he asks, “about either smoking or drinking?” He puts his menu down and never returns to it.
GQ Style: I've been curious about smoking weed, I guess... Especially when people talk about it helping with creativity.
Aziz Ansari: To me, the argument for drugs is that you live your life with this one perspective all the time. Why not just see what it's like from a different perspective? To be on some crazy drugs.
What's the most fun drug you've ever done?
I've done mushrooms a few times, but I've never done much beyond that. I gotta be in the right environment to do drugs. Could you imagine if I was on mushrooms right now? It's like, everyone in this restaurant knows who I am. Do you realize how terrifying that would be? So I really have to be somewhere alone, away from everybody.
How are your paranoia levels generally?
I'm pretty comfortable with myself.
You should be, man. You're coming off of a major win with season two of Master of None. It seemed like a big evolution from season one..
You get an incredibly different perspective when you do the second season of a show. You know what worked—you know what you were most excited about that you made. [Co-creator] Alan [Yang] and I looked at the episodes from season one, and our favorites were the ones that were really ambitious—where we were really trying something new. They really got people talking, like the “Parents” episode or “Indians on TV.” So this season, we're like, Let's just make every episode something like that. Not that we didn't try to do that the first season, but we were like, Let's be really aggressive about it. There are a lot of crazy things we tried.
The Thanksgiving episode, which was heavy on flashbacks and a total aside from the season's main narratives, got a lot of praise.
I was sitting at dinner last night after the shoot, and this guy just started talking about that episode: “I'm gay and I'm black and that was my experience.” And it was so cool, because it seemed like it was a specific story, but it's a really universal experience for a lot of people.
Quentin Tarantino has accused Spike Lee of criticizing Tarantino's work simply because he's a white man telling a black story. The criticism being: A white person shouldn't make a movie about slavery or whatever. You explored a lot of other people's walks of life with Master of None. Do you think it matters that you're not gay or black or female?
I'll say this. I wrote the Thanksgiving episode with Lena [Waithe, Aziz's co-star in the episode]. And I wouldn't have done it if Lena either didn't write it with me or sit down with me for a long, long time and let me write it. If you're only writing about yourself, that's limiting as a storyteller, but if you're gonna go into other people's worlds, you'd better get it right. If a white dude wrote the episode “Indians on TV,” I don't think they would have written it in that way; they would have gotten it wrong. And it's a little offensive for them to be like, Well, this is what I think that experience is. You know what I mean?
What's the most annoying question that people ask about Master of None?
You know what I'm glad about? After the first season, I fucking ran out of things to say about diversity. But after the second season, there hasn't been anything, like, very annoying—there's just things that you get asked a lot. Like: What about season three? Which is obviously a question people have to ask, but for me it's a little stress-inducing. Alan once said it best: It's like we just gave birth to a kid and they're like, When are you gonna have another kid?
Well, your last two “kids” were cute as hell, to be fair.
I just feel like I've said a lot. Especially if you look at it—instead of two seasons of a TV show—as, like, seven movies. I mean, those two seasons are really personal, and it's a lot of content, a lot of ideas. Now I need a minute to refill my notebook. My life has not progressed enough for me to write season three yet.
You really don't feel the need to make anything?
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. We both have more money than we ever imagined. And I was like, Can you imagine if someone called us a few years ago and said, “All right, you're going to have this much money when you're this age. What are you gonna do with it?” You would say all sorts of fantastical things, right? No one would say, Oh, I would figure out how to make more money and keep working all the time. Everyone just buys into this, like, Oh, I need to keep making stuff, I need to go make more money. I don't need to make more stuff. I've made a lot of stuff! I'm financially okay. I'm not gonna make stuff just for the sake of making stuff. I want to make stuff ’cause I'm inspired. Right now I don't really feel inspired.
So you're focusing on living good?
It's not about living good, necessarily. I don't want to be a guy that's, like, running away from having a normal life. You know? If I keep living like a vagabond… I'm in Japan for two months, France for a month. I'm going to live in Italy. At a certain point, that feels like you're running from something.
I heard you deleted the Internet from your phone. And that you deleted Twitter and Instagram and e-mail. No way that's true, right?
It is! Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on The New York Times to see if there's a new thing, it's not even about the content. It's just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. You're not going to be able to control yourself. So the only way to fight that is to take yourself out of the equation and remove all these things. What happens is, eventually you forget about it. You don't care anymore. When I first took the browser off my phone, I'm like, [gasp] How am I gonna look stuff up? But most of the shit you look up, it's not stuff you need to know. All those websites you read while you're in a cab, you don't need to look at any of that stuff. It's better to just sit and be in your own head for a minute. I wanted to stop that thing where I get home and look at websites for an hour and a half, checking to see if there's a new thing. And read a book instead. I've been doing it for a couple months, and it's worked. I'm reading, like, three books right now. I'm putting something in my mind. It feels so much better than just reading the Internet and not remembering anything.
What about important news and politics?
I was reading all this Trump stuff, and it doesn't feel like we're reading news for the reason we used to, which was to get a better sense of what's going on in the world and to enrich yourself by being aware. It seems like we're reading wrestling rumors. It's like reading about what happened on Monday Night Raw. When you take a step back, it all just seems so sensationalized. Trump's gonna get impeached! No, he's not. None of that shit's happening. But you are going to read all the articles. So if you take yourself out of it, you're not infected with this toxicity all the time. Also, guess what? Everything is fine! I'm not out of the loop on anything. Like, if something real is going down, I'll find out about it.
Yeah, but take yesterday's insane breaking story, for example.
Wait, tell me what it is. I don't even know if I know what it is.
You didn't hear about Pence stepping down?
Mike Pence stepped down yesterday?!
Dude! Yes. Mike Pence is no longer the vice president. He resigned because of the Russia investigation.
Wait, wait, wait. That really happened?!
No. It didn't.
Okay, see! [laughs]
But that could happen! And you could have missed it.
No, see, I would have found out now—like, now. I would have found out, and then I'd be like, Wow, that's crazy.
But you're choosing to be uninformed.
I'm not choosing ignorance. I'm choosing to not watch wrestling.
Are you an optimist? You feel like it'll all work out no matter what?
I'm not saying it doesn't matter... I don't think me reading the news is helping anything. I think it's hurting me. It's putting me in a bad state of mind. And I could see how someone could hear that about me and be like, Oh, you're ignoring what's happening in the world ’cause you don't want negativity in your head. That seems very selfish. Maybe it is. I don't know. It's not like I was reading it and then, like, immediately taking action in a way that was helping to fix problems. I can still cut checks without reading the articles. I cut my checks, man! [laughs]
Are you a religious person? A spiritual person?
I don't know.
What do you think happens when you die?
I don't know.
Well, no one knows. But what do you think?
I think you either rot in the ground or maybe find out life is a simulation. Who knows? I don't think about things like that. To me there's no point.
There are plenty of points, though! Curiosity being the first one.
I'm curious, but it's all just massive speculation. I think it's more fun to think about whether life's a simulation than to think about what happens when you die. I love the “Life is a simulation” argument. The idea that you can foresee a future where we'd be able to create worlds that would be indistinguishable from ours. So that means that if that technology exists, they would make millions of these worlds to test all sorts of different things, right? And if that was the case, there's millions of realities. How can we possibly think we're in the one real one? In all likelihood, we're in one of the fake ones. For all we know, this could be a simulation for some executive to be like, If we gave an Indian guy a show, it would resonate with people! And they ran the simulation and we're living it and we're just sims. And they decided to green-light Master of None in the real world.
Okay. Let's say you were running the simulation. What would you change about this reality?
I wouldn't change much. I would probably adjust my personal life to be in a loving relationship, and I'd probably adjust it so I got to spend more time with my parents. And I would create teleportation, so I could see people quickly without worrying about travel. I'm very happy. That's another reason I don't really care about work stuff. Look, the conventional wisdom is you come off a win like I had with season two, now you can do another thing. But I've had that high, twice now, of making something I really care about, that I really believe in, that I'm really inspired by, and having people respond to it. I'd rather figure out other things in my life that I don't feel as good about. I don't feel as good about my personal life as I do my professional life.
Why not?
Because I haven't invested in my personal life the way that I have in my professional life. I'm way more dedicated to my professional life. And I realized that recently, you know?
Are you currently single?
[Nods]
Describe Aziz Ansari's dream girl.
Someone I would be thrilled to do nothing with who would be as equally thrilled to do nothing with me.
Have you ever said that line before?
I've said the first part, but I added the second part just now.
I have to be honest, my man. I'm surprised at how sad you sound. It's a beautiful night in Paris, France, you have the hottest thing streaming, suede loafers on your feet... You don't seem like someone who has the world by the balls, you know?
I got the world by the balls professionally. Personally, I'm alone right now. And when you have the world by the balls professionally, the balls disintegrate and then you gotta find new balls when you're inspired again. So right now, I have it by the balls, but I'm feeling it slowly going away and I'm worried about finding new balls. But another part of me is like, You don't need to find new balls. The new balls will come when they need to come. Live your life, experience things, and balls will always come your way.
Aziz Ansari looking for balls.
Looking for balls!
Do you want kids?
I think I want to meet someone I want to have that discussion with. Wait! Let's go back to the balls! What would you think I would do if I felt more sure of myself? Like, I feel pretty confident. I'm not trying to get into a relationship right away. I'm trying to get mature and evolve as a person. Even cutting out the Internet and social-media stuff, and reading more, is a good step in the right direction.
Do other comics ever pressure you to do more?
I got lunch with Bobby Cannavale, who plays Chef Jeff, and Louis C.K. was there. And I say hi to Louis, and he's like, Yeah, I'm shooting something. And I'm like, Fuck, man! He's, like, making something he's excited about. So then I'm like: What am I doing? I need to make something! I need to make something again! You know? Or I walk by and I see posters for Chappelle's shows at Radio City. I'm like, I need to do shows! What am I doing? I need to write a new stand-up set! But if I'm in Italy, I don't think about any of that shit. I see an old man riding a bike and I'm like, That looks nice.
That makes sense.
I hope more people get very successful and then quit. Shouldn't that be the game? That you make a bunch of money and just move to Italy and live a quiet life? No one does it! You do a bunch of shit and you just want to do more shit. Tom Cruise! Look at that guy! He will not stop. He's still making these fucking movies. No one who does what I do—or anywhere related in my world—is ever like, I'm done. That's why I travel so much. I always think about this thing someone once told me. They said, Patterns are the work of the devil. For some reason that stuck in my head. And I don't even know if it's true.
Who said that to you?
I don't want to say. Because it's…I mean, I guess I can tell you. Diane Sawyer said that to me... She said, You're falling into a pattern, and patterns are the work of the devil.
What is it about Italy?
I just love the culture. It just clicks with me. I love spritzes, I love espresso. I feel like I've talked about pasta too much, but I do like pasta. I just love their whole attitude toward life.
With dinner over, we leave the restaurant and start walking to the Ferris wheel.
Maybe we should grab some candy for our walk. What's your favorite candy?
I don't eat a ton of candy, but I like orange Starbursts.
That's definitely the worst flavor, man.
People like orange! By the way, if you put this in the article, you realize I will get a fucking massive packet of Starbursts sent to me.
You're welcome?
I don't want them! If you're reading this, Starbursts social-media person, please don't send me the Starbursts. Send them to some needy children that need Starbursts.
What's your favorite thing that you've been mailed unsolicited?
My favorite thing anyone ever gave me unsolicited was one time I did a show at the Largo in Los Angeles, and this woman gave me a painting of Soulja Boy. And I still have it. It's Soulja Boy just kind of looking out the window. It's incredible. What fragrance are you wearing?
Tom Ford Oud Wood.
Whoa. So someone gave me that recently. But I put it on—I think it smells great—and it just went away. How do you put it on? I need your spray technique.
Tom Ford once told me in an interview that you can never spray too much of a good cologne.
I mean, that can't be right. [laughs]
He takes so many baths a day, I'm sure he always smells amazing.
That's a thing I'm into!
Baths?
Baths! I'm really into soaking tubs.
How difficult was it being a young Indian kid growing up in South Carolina?
You know, people always ask me that, and it's not the answer people expect. It was so different back then. If I was growing up there now, being the only Indian or brown-looking kid, I think it'd be a nightmare, because of all the Islamophobia. But none of that existed back then. They didn't have much to make fun of me with, and they'd never really met any other minorities. Plus, I grew up with all these people since, like, kindergarten, so they all just knew me.
That's ironic, really. American Muslims are probably the only minority who, if you turn back the clock, would be treated better in America.
Much better! Wait! You didn't tell me your cologne-spray technique. I've gotta get the black-dude cologne-spray strategy. I feel like black dudes always smell good, and they somehow are doing a different spray technique than I'm doing.
Who's the best-smelling black dude—myself excluded—that you've ever smelled?
Ginuwine smells really good. He did Parks and Rec and…he smelled really good every time I ran into him.
Did you ask him what cologne he was wearing?
I didn't ask. Q-Tip smells really good! I asked him what cologne he was wearing once. And he was like, Oh, you know, and he walked away. He didn't want to tell me.
What's the best advice you've received as of late?
I was talking to Spike Jonze the other day, and he was like, Yeah, I'm not really doing anything right now. My rule is, if it's not more fun than going surfing, I'm not gonna do it. I love when I say no to everything. [laughs]
But are you afraid to let too much time go by? Are you afraid to miss your wave?
Undeniable is undeniable.… And I'm not gonna make something else until I think it's undeniable.
Mark Anthony Green is GQ's Style Guy.
This story appears in the Fall 2017 issue of GQ Style with the title “Master Class.”
