Aziz Ansari’s Great Ideas for TV Shows
Comedy superstar Aziz Ansari got Q&A;’d in a Vulture blog post today. He’s pulling his share of the PR weight for “Funny People,” and if you haven’t caught any of his and Jason Woliner’s RAAAAAAAANDY! videos, well, then you probably haven’t been on the Internet lately. But when New York Magazine’s Lane Brown brought up “Parks and Recreation,” Aziz didn’t waste any time in explaining that nobody had to ask him twice to play the unctuous Tom Haverford:
“They could’ve told me the show was going to be anything. It could’ve been, you know, ‘It’s about you and Paul Walker running a bakery together and we’re going to shoot it like The Office.’ And I would’ve had to have been like, ‘Alright, I am signed up for that show. Let’s do it. Let’s call up Paul Walker.'”
Paul Walker? Hot! But as far back as March, Aziz has kinda been Mad-Lib-riffing hypothetical shows that “Parks and Recreation” might have been. And, well, we think some of them sound damn fun to watch. Consider…
• “They could have come back and said, ‘Yeah, the show’s about you running a Laundromat with Vin Diesel. That’s what we came up with — hope you like it!'” Ansari joked. (Montreal Gazette; July 21, 2009)
• “They could have been like, ‘We decided to do a show about you and Soulja Boy and you guys running a lemonade stand together — a lot like The Office!’ And I would have had to do it because of the contract.” (Punchline Magazine; May 19, 2009)
• “I got hired before I knew what the show was going to be,” remembers Ansari. “They could have come back and said the show is going to be you and Bruce Willis in a taco truck.” (Entertainment Weekly; April 10, 2009)
• “They could’ve told me the premise is that you and Vin Diesel run a day-care center together and at night you fight crime, and it’s shot like ‘The Office,’ documentary-style, I’d be like, ‘I’m doing that show,'” says Mr. Ansari. (The Wall Street Journal; March 27, 2009)
• “They were like, ‘It’s either going to be a spinoff of ‘The Office’ or a totally separate thing,'” Mr. Ansari said. “It could have been like, ‘Yeah, so it’s about you and Vin Diesel running a day care center together, and then at night you’re vigilantes, and you fight crime.'” (The New York Times; March 29, 2009)