Fresh Face: Aziz Ansari
His Current Gig: Lotion salesman and flasher suspect Saddam in Observe and Report, cynical city worker Tom Haverford in NBC’s upcoming Parks and Recreation, and for a quick minute, you’ll see him as fencing student Eugene in I Love You, Man.
You Know This Face … because Ansari, 26, starred alongside Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer on the MTV hit Human Giant where the trio spent two seasons making larger-than-life short films and sketches. In tandem with his HG success, the South Carolina actor played a racist fruit vendor on Flight of the Conchords, an intern on Scrubs (fired by Dr. Cox!) and took small parts in The Rocker and School for Scoundrels.
Why So Fresh? Not only is the New York University grad set for Office-caliber success with his new Amy Poehler-co-starring mockumentary Parks and Recreation, but he’s still getting big screen gigs, too. Watch for Ansari this summer in Funny People. He joins a long list of comic actors in a film about a dying comedian (Adam Sandler) and his impressionable young sidekick (Seth Rogen).
In His Own Words … “Some friends told me I should try [stand-up], and I did,” he tells Starpulse of getting into the biz. “I was pretty scared, but I had a lot of friends there who were very supportive (i.e. laughing at mediocre-to-terrible material because they are my friends). People who are going to try stand-up always e-mail me and sound so stressed about their first show. The truth is, it doesn’t matter at all. You just need to do stand-up constantly and get better. Nothing is decided by your first show, at all.”
LAST WEEK’S FRESH FACE: ‘Kings’ Star Chris Egan
