The Talented Mr. Mandvi

the CW panel show What I Lie to You. But there's more than meets the eye with this multifaceted performer. Nvy trained in Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov, and his theater credits include both work on Broadway and the Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced. In the late nineties, Assif Manvi wrote and starred in the off Broadway one man show Sachina's Restaurant, which earned him an Obie Award. MV shared with me

how his level of adaptability came to be. Born in Mumbai, India and raised in Bradford, England, he lived in Bahrain for the first years of his life, separated from his parents. I wanted to know what those formative years were like for him. My grandmother and my grandfather lived in Bahrain, which is right off the coast of Saudi Arabia and a little island, one of the wealthiest places in the world.

My great grandfather had gone to Bahrain in the like early nine hundreds and started a business there, and my grandfather had a huge toy store in the capital city of Bahrain. So my grandparents lived there part of the year. So I went and lived with them in Bahrain when I was a year and a half old. How long until I was three? So was it over a year? Was I? Yeah? It's interesting like the times at that time, because they sent me on a plane by myself to

Bahrain from London. And I was like, Dad, did you not? I asked my dad recently actually about this. I was like, we're not concerned, and and and he I think he was just like at that time, we just didn't really worry about it. We didn't We didn't think about what kind of psychological impact that would have on you, or even the danger of it. We just sort of gave you to the airline. The stewardess was very nice, she said, we'll take care of him. We didn't really think about it,

you know. Yeah, it was sort of that. It was it was like it was like the stewardess was really nice and she was going to take care of you, and and we put you on the plane. I met you, Yeah, and my grandmother met me on the other side. You know, Um, this is like it's been a pre and nine eleven world. There was more of that, and now post nine eleven, of course it's it's a different world. But do you recall it all what it was like when you reunited

with them. Yeah, it's actually one of my very earliest memories is returning to London Heathrow with my and mother and like it's it's just a memory of shadows, and I seem to remember my mother wearing a white sorry and she's got her arms reached out. But the crazy part of it is I didn't reckon. I didn't know who she was, so in the year and a half that I was gone, I had forgotten about her and and I sort of acclimated myself to this other life.

And now I was back and she was like, I'm your mom, And I just remember like that feeling of holding onto my grandmother's arm and just being like, what's going on here? You know, like, who are these who are these strangers? But then my grandparents stayed with me and my parents, they stayed with us for the next six months or so for the transition, for the transition back into the into the UK. Are both your parents

alive now? My mother is not alive, my father is alive yet either one of them articulate to in your adult life their feelings about that period, with how difficult it was for them. My mother talked about it a lot. It was hard for her to talk about, you know, it was it was she was a young girl who didn't have a great deal of agency around it. I think it was her father's decision to have me go back and live with him and my grandmother, and and because he just wanted my parents to get on their

feet a little bit more settled. And I think, you know, in India, kids are raised in large, communal families, so that kind of idea, you know, the grandparents and uncles and aunts and everybody sort of raises At least my my mother came from that kind of family where everybody lived together and it was very communal and people raised each other. So there was very much that sense of like, oh,

you know, we'll send him over there. And and so my mother did talk about it later in life of how difficult it was for her in that time, when you know, she's working, she's doing this job at this television factory where she's on a conveyor belt with like you know, vis in this foreign land and her child is halfway across the world. I think it was really really difficult for her, And and and she couldn't talk about it that much. It was the one thing in her life that I think it was the first thing

she would have changed in her life. I think had she been able to What's interesting, how I wonder if there's a commonality here. I find it very often the people who are asked to grow up quickly, even if only to negotiate one condition like that, you know, the transfer at a very early age to the grandparents and come back and things like that, and you have to manage your feelings about that. That gives people, I find who are performers and actors a bit of an edge.

Not everyone has this, not everyone has it to the same degree, but it gives them kind of a confidence and a kind of command because they've gotten through things from an early age that we're difficult to get through. And your acting, in your performances, you have an authority to you. You could play the head of the FBI that runs into and says, okay, man, here's you know you You could do any of these things. You can kiss the girl, you can go say all right, men,

code zero and we're going in. There's a lot of things you can do. And I always wonder if that ephemeral quality that people have, like when people say to me, I'll play parts, and I'll play some really really tough, mean character. They always want to hire me to play the guy that straightens people out. And what I say is I say, it's acting. I say, if I don't do it, I get fired. So I go in there and it's acting, meaning it has nothing to do with

me and who I am. I just but but I have inside me the confidence to jump off that cliff and make those choices that are stronger choices because of a certain conditions of my own life, you know what I mean. Your life wasn't all candy canes and unicorns, you know what I mean? And and maybe that empowers you. Yeah, I mean I think that there was a certain level of probably some of the stuff that I dealt with, you know, growing up sort of a lot forced me sometimes,

I think, to access my imagination. And you know, I was a very imaginative child that was creating like little uh we have the old cassette tapes and I would I would do like radio plays when I was like seven or eight years old, you know, and they were sort of like Monty Python esque, sort of like these little you know, and and so I was very there was a lot of escapism for me as a kid, you know, like escaping out of the sort of the

depression of living in the north of England. My parents were struggling and they were very loving and they were a very loving home. But the circumstances I lived in, and I think also as an immigrant and a brown kid in a white world at that time, there was an adaptability that I had to find. I had to be able to fit in. I had to be able to like figure out how to adapt quickly and charm you and and yeah, and use whatever your humor or whatever I could. And I think that also, I mean,

I think I had a proclivity towards performing. Maybe you did too. From very I think that was part of my d n a, you know, like I just but I think that it was probably helped along by this idea that like I, I knew I was sort of adaptable and mutable, and I felt like I had to be, you know, to survive. There was a lot of racism when I was a kid in the north of England.

No I want to talk about that. So when you get there, you come, and you're there for some brief window, you leave and go to Bahrain, and you come back. Describe Bradford at that time, you see and you yourself described, I'm a brown kid in a white world. What was it like for you there? It was you know, my dad had a corner shop what in New York you'd call it a bodega, and my mom was helped him in the store. She was also a house way, you know. And and and it was sort of a lower middle

class life. It was a time when politically in England, the National Front was very powerful at that time, which was this very anti immigrant sort of political party run by this guy named Enoch Powell. And so there was a lot of of racism in the community and in the culture, and in and in the rhetoric. And I do remember getting chased home by a band of kids after school and getting you know, let's go packy bashing

and all that. So I would get off the bus and and run and and and the kids would they would chase me and they and I would get caught in an alleyway and you have like four kids, you know what I mean, English kids, and and and that was a semi regular sort of occurrence, you know, not say that everyone was like that, but there was that that went on. And then I went to boarding school, which the whole other level of insanity when I was

a little bit older, when I was thirteen. But it's interesting because I looked back on it now with a certain fondness for the place and the time. But it was also like a weird hard you know. It wasn't it wasn't like the It was. It was a rough kind of upbringing. You know, when you finally leave and your father wants to go over to the United States. Uh, he was in the He wanted to get involved in

some kind of textiles work, textile research. Well he was doing he was doing that in Bradford, but then he started his own business. Then he left and opened this corner shop and then he had like a little business and then he wanted to come to America and just uh, you know, he was he wanted to open up a business.

I don't want to make it all about race, but when you leave Bradford and you have a you know, whatever amount of that you have to deal with on a day to day base us and then to come to Tampa, Florida, I'm not assuming Tampa was the East Village of New York in terms of its enlightenment. What was that like that transition? Why Tampa Because my father had a college roommate who lived in Tampa, and my dad was originally wanting to move to Canada. And he

had always talked about going to Canada. This was the eighties thatchers England. It was bad unemployment. My dad had a small business. He was like, we were doing okay, but he always sort of talked about going to Canada. And then he ran. And then he called up his buddy of his who he went to school within India, and this guy said, I'm living in Tampa and Florida is the future. Man, you gotta come, you gotta come.

He was like the city of right. So you know, I had grown up watching American movies, you know, Hollywood movies. That was my like escape as a kid. And so for me, the idea of living in America, I just thought my life was going to be like the movies, you know, it was gonna be. And then I get to America and and so Tampa, Florida was my I mean, I visited America when I was a kid. I'd gone to Disney World and all that, you know, but but Tampa was like my introduction to what America was. And

it was very I went to high school. I was dropped right in the middle of this high school, and I just remember how white it was and and and what was amazing was there were no Indian kids, Like like Bradford had a large Indo Pakistani community. There was a lot of it did there was a lot of racial strife, but there was a large community there in Tampa, Florida. I was the only I think it was, one of two Indian kids in my high school. And the other Indian kid wouldn't talk to me because he saw me

as a liability. So he was like, I'm not gonna having to do with this new guy. You think you and I are plotting plotting, right, exactly. He was like he was kind of popular. It was in the band, and you know what I mean. He wouldn't talk to me. And I remember in the cafeteria all the black kids would sit on on one side and all the white kids would sit on the other side. Not because that was the way it was supposed, that was just the

way it divided up. And it was like there was no interaction, Like none of my sort of middle class white friends hung out with any of the black kids. So it was really interesting. But I got into um. I found my little drama click in high school and that's what really saved me. And who mentored you into that, who emboldened you, who comes to you and or or what is inside of you It says I want to hit the drama club or whatever. The first rung on the ladder is well my really, honestly, I give credit

to my mother. So I had been in this very private English school when I was in England, and they didn't have drama class, but they had art. So I took art. But my mother they knew that there was always a little bit of I had sort of taken these after school drama classes and stuff. I used to be part of this like children's theater group. So my

mother knew that I enjoyed performing. And when I got to Tampa, you know, you go for the orientation to high in high school and they have these electives which we didn't have in England. You know, it was all very My school was very math science, you know, biology, English, you know, and so they had these electives and you could take classes like psychology, which I was like, that was very very progressive, you know, and so on. There was a drama and I checked off art because I thought, well,

that's I've done that before. And and my mom looked at me and she said, are you sure you want to do art? Because they have drama here, unlike your school in England, they actually have a drama class. Wouldn't you rather do drama? I didn't even occur to me that that was a thing that you could do in school, and so I said, yeah, maybe I should do that, and so we scratched our art and we put in drama and that's how I ended up a sixth period

doing drama class. And when you were there doing the drama class, what starts to take you It was the more you do with the more it deepens the more you like it. Yeah, I think it was always it was just always in me and I and I had, like I said, I've been doing sort of like I was part of a children's theater company when I was in England after school kind of thing. But just that became like my tribe, my sort of sanity, you know, like it just sort of it was where I it was. Yeah.

I mean I think in my life, acting has always been like a savior for me, you know, you know, it saved me from the sort of stuff that I

dealt with in my childhood. Then landing in a new country, America, What do I make of this place that's all new, these people, you know, like I was this little English kid in America who's also I was also brown, you know, and then suddenly there I wasn't drama class, and these kids in drama class sort of like I felt like this was my pep, these are my people, you know, and and and so I again it was it was sort of like it saved me through that period of

transition coming to America and the first gig you get, I think professional as you're working at Disney World, Is that correct? Yeah? So I ended up at us F University South Florida in doing theater, and uh, and I was, you know, my we still were not citizens of this country. We were still on a green card, so I couldn't

get the in state tuition. And my parents were struggling, and they were, you know, and so I was paying some ridiculous amount, like I was paying it myself as a four hundred dollars a semester or some credit for for So I was taken like I was going very

slowly through the curriculum. And I and I auditioned a bunch of my friends and they were opening up the MGM Studios in Orlando, which was part of like the Disney complex over there, and a bunch of my friends and drama class said, Hey, we're gonna go an audition. You know, they're looking for like improv actors. There's a

comedy troupe. Great, I'll go. They wanted a monologue and I and I had been working on this Eric Bagoshen monologue in act in my scene study class Sex Drugs and rock and Roll, Sex Drugs and rock and Roll, the short order, fry Cook, what do you what do you want? Come here? Come? You know that guy who's the New Yorker guy? And so I had been working on this monologue and so we all drove out to this audition was a big open call in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, and uh, and I auditioned and got

the job. And this was eighty nine right. They're paying me four hundred and sixty dollars a week. You know, there was there was housing, and it was more money than I'd ever seen in my life. And I did a soap proper, same thing, four hundred of the day, and I was I was Rockefeller, right, and I was like four hundred sixty bucks a week. I was like, this is crazy, Like I can go make a bunch of money and come back, finish my education, go finish school, you know, get my degree. And so I said, okay,

I'm gonna go do this. And I joined what was called Streetmosphere, which was a street improvisational comedy troupe. We're working there. Down the street was the Mickey Mouse Club, and there were the kids who later became Justin timber Lake and Christina Aguilera. They used to come and watch us.

We used to have our rehearsal and in the and these little kids these twelve year olds would stand in the corner watching us, and it was Justin and Christina and Brittany and all those kids that later became big, huge superstars. And I was working with like some really funny people. It was great. More Collins was there. I remember she went on to Mad TV and other people

that went on have comedy careers. We were just doing improv and then we'd go out on the street on the lot and we would just play improv games with people. So it actually ended up for me weirdly being like a comedy grad school where I just got to work with all these really funny people, get paid and and I was there for a year, and then I went and worked at Universal Studios down the street when they opened, and I did that whole theme park thing for about

a couple of years. I got cast in this show called The Phantom of the Opera Horror Makeup Show, and it was this stage show where they basically had an audience come in and they would do a kind of thing where they teach you how to do horror makeup in movies, right, But the whole setup of it was there was a host and a guest and the guy was the makeup artist. And what I realized was what they had actually done was take an episode of The

David Letterman Show and just completely recreated on stage. So the host was David Letterman and the guest was a guy named Mark James, who was a very famous Hollywood makeup artist, and these two guys just had on all the jokes. If you go back and watch The Letterman, that's all the jokes of the same it's it's the transcript of his episode of interviewing this makeup artist that they put on stage, and we would do it five times a day for a different audience, and it was great.

When did you go to New York? Early ninety one, I was dating a girl in Florida and she said, I'm moving to New York because I want to do theater. And I had nothing to do because I was sort of like hanging out in Florida, and I was like, I want to go to New York. You were doing staged versions of Letterman sketch exactly exactly for me. It

was the next time. I was like, I'm probably gonna either go to New York or l A. And And at the time she was going to New York and I said, I'll come with you, and so I just followed it. In New York, actor Assaf mndy Mondy and I share a mutual love and respect for our former acting teacher Win Hammon, whom I had the honor to speak with in two thousand eighteen. Give us two examples who came through your doors who you just excited you. You knew they had it. They went on to become

great actor. Michael Douglas. He said, you asked me if it was all right, if I could call your mother there and tell her how good you are. I knew his mother, and he was good. He was, he was very good. Right. What about a woman? What's an actress who came through your doors? Alison Janny? Alison Janny probbly talented. Yeah, you just give a role. She can do it all. She can do it all. You'll hear us if MV discuss his work with Win Handman later in this episode.

To hear more of my conversation with the legendary acting coach, go to Here's the Thing dot Org after the break as if MONVI tells us how a chance encounter with Sam Shepard and John Malkovich changed the course of his career. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing asif. Nvy and I have many things in common, including our love of theater and phil him and we were both

students of the late great acting teacher Win Handman. Handman was the director of the American Place Theater in New York City and helped hone the craft of actors like Christopher Walking, Alison Janny, and Mnvy himself. What I loved about working with Whin was that he took you where

you were. I mean, everybody was at a certain level, but within that like you saw people who were more accomplished and had better skills certain things than some people who are Like I remember there was this one actress because she was a dancer, and this was indicative of the way Wind sort of worked where he gave her a scene and he said, look, you're a dancer, so why don't you just use the physicality of the scene, use your body, use the thing that you are comfortable

with to access the character. You know, and I love that about him because he took what you were bringing and used that to help you find the character, whatever it was. If you're a dancer of your singer, if you're fun, if you were more of a dramatic you know.

And and so it was. And he also was really great about like just saying, you know, trust the text and and and remember, Like a big thing he would give actors all the time was like just the stillness of like just standing there and letting the text do the world. You don't have to work so hard all the time, you know, and and and but I loved Win. And he actually made my career really because I auditioned for Win again. The same girl that I followed up

to New York came home one day. We were living together, and she came home one day and she said, I'm auditioning for this guy named Win Handon and I had heard about him. And it's funny because I actually, I think two weeks after I arrived in New York, I walked down forty Street and in front of me, I see Sam Shepherd and John Malkovich, right, Malkovich and Sam Shephard walking down the street. And I'm from Florida, you know, Like I'm like, holy shit, Like what the fund is?

You know? I I was so excited to see these two guys. I followed them, and I said, where are they coming out of? What building did they just leave? And I looked over and it was the American Place Theater that they which was Wins Theater that they had just walked down for. And they went down and they were in the middle of rehearsing a show, and I thought to myself, that's the place I want to I want to work a place where Malkovich and Sam Shepard

walk out of on a Tuesday afternoon, you know. Anyway, So when she said win Hammon, I said, oh, I know who he is, and I want to study with him. And I went in and I had written these monologues because I wanted to do a solo show and I was doing a little bit of stand up before that, which I didn't really love. But I started writing characters and I brought in these characters into the audition for

his class. I got into his class, and then I would bring in these characters and he helped me develop my one man show, Sakinas Restaurant, which then years later, how did that evolve? So that evolve basically me coming in twice a week into Winds class and writing stuff and bringing it in and performing it. And when just given me direction. I remember when I've written this character that was based on my dad, he was talking to his daughter and he was kind of brating her about

the outfit that she was wearing. She was about to go out with her friends, and he was sort of talking about and it was about the culture and the immigrant and he was an immigrant father. And and I remember when saying to me, like this, this monologue is fine,

He's like, but it needs some dramatic tension. He put a phone next to me and he said, Okay, so you you're in your restaurant and the phone keeps ringing, and you're trying to have this very like private emotional conversation with your daughter, but the phone keeps ringing and you have to keep picking up the phone to answer because customers are calling to make reservations. And so he did that, and I'd be in the middle of the model.

Then he would go the phones were go, go answer the phone, answer the phone, and I answer, and then he would pretend to be the customer on the other line, Hello, I'd like a table for three tonight, you know, And then I have to be polite on the phone, and he'd be like Okay, hang up, now go back to your daughter. Where were you? You You forgot what you wor?

So now what we were? What we you know? And so we would do this and it was it sort of taught me how to write for the stage as well as just working on my own stuff, you know, and and and over the course of several years we kind of worked on different characters and developed it. And then I ended up working with the director who helped me shape the whole show and put it together. And then when came and saw it. I did it at the West Bank Downstairs Theater and then he said, okay,

let's get this up at the American Place Theater. And then he did. He put it up at the American Place Theater. And this is the story I told that his memorial. So I'm doing the show. This is the New York Times comes to review it. We get this love letter in the New York Times. And it was the greatest day of my life. It was like I woke up that morning, there's a love letter in the Times. So the show, you know, we're selling tickets. It's a small theater, less than a hundred seats, and we've been

running for about a month. And I get an offer to go do another play at the Manhattan Theater Club. And it was a play by Terence McNally called Corpus Christie and it was about the gay Jesus and it was getting all of this attention in the media. People were really up in arms about the Christian Right was protesting the theater. Terence McNally was, you know, and it was a kind of a sexy group of young actors who were going to be in this thing, and they

wanted me to play one of the disciples. My agents called me in and they said, listen, you you got the review, You've run the show for four weeks. Now you've got this other thing. Let's go do it. You know it's gonna be a big It's the cover of Time magazine. It's gonna be you know, it's gonna be huge. And I called when and I said when, you know, everyone's telling me I should close my show and go do this other play. And I remember he just said, are you crazy? This is your show, this is the

show that you wrote, that you created. It's you, it's all you. You're doing seven characters, Like, why would you close that to go be part of an ensemble with a bunch of other guys, you know, with a small part or whatever. I said, well, you know it's gonna be sexy. It's gonna be on the cover of Time magazine. Reporters are outside, and he said, don't worry about that. He said, I'm telling you right now, this will be the biggest mistake of your life if you do this.

And I remember him saying that to me, and he said to me, he said, look, Austin, if here's what I'll do, I will keep And I still get emotional when I think about this, because nobody does this in our business. The show had been running since June. It was July. He said, I will keep you open until January of next year. Whether I'm making money or I'm not making money. I guarantee I will keep you open. I won't close you. And he goes, you won't get that guarantee from those guys. He goes, I will keep

you open. And he did, and and the other show closed in two weeks. Terence McNally closed in two weeks. Yeah, he closed in two weeks. The New York Times killed it. And there's nothing about nothing against that show. They all you know, it was had great Michael Hall was in it, like a lot of great actors were in it. But for me, in that moment, it would have been the wrong decision. And when made that promise to me, and

I couldn't. I went to my agents and I said, look, he's gonna keep me open for six months, Like how am I? You know he's not gonna And he did and he kept his word. And what happened in those six months were that word got around that there was this young Indian kid who was doing this play about an Indian family and this Indian restaurant, and no one had done that on the New York stage. There was no shows that were about a South Asian immigrant family

written and performed by South Asians. And people got word of it, and the word of mouth start to spreading. People started coming from all over Long Island and New Jersey and upstairs, you know, from all over the borrows. We have bus loads of people coming to see the play because there would never been a play about the South Asians, Indians, Pakistani's, Bangladesh's, even other immigrants. They've never seen this play before. They've never you know, and so

it's such a specific thing. So we stayed open, our audiences grew, we want to oh b Awards, and I got a movie out of it. So you know what I mean, We all, I think we all have a similar thing where there's a fork in the road. Yeah. And and what I always tell people is, if the circumstances present themselves, they may come to me and say, oh, what what should I do? And I'll say, I suggest that because your instincts have gotten you here thus far,

you stick with those instincts. The business will always ask you at some point, or typically we'll ask you at some point to abandon your instincts. I'll never forget. I got to a place where I did a show off Broadway and we had a love letter from the Times, and they were going to move the show to Broadway, and instead I was offered my first million dollar pay day in the movie business. And my agent looked at me.

My my agent was like, come on, your schmuck. They're offering you a million dollars here, and it's it's like, you know, of course, we're gonna tank the Broadway production

of this precious little dark comedy. This was prelude to a kiss, and I'm gonna go off and do this movie, And I wrote in my memory, I said, that's when I knew I had made the mistake that changed my career, because once I allowed people to push me into a corner where it was about chasing money, and it was about a type of movie start and where people are like, you know, we're just gonna keep throwing it against the

wall till something sticks. Who cares if you've got to spend the next two years doing four movies that are complete steaming piles of ship and you're never gonna have any creative nutrition for the next two years. You're playing a different game. Now you have been asked to come and play a different game. And I look back at that time of my life just like you with your play, and I go, I made the wrong choice, and I made the wrong choice. So you did Disgraced and Link

he said, they want they won the Poetzer Prize. Man. That was another one of those things that So I had actor who wrote Disgraced, who is one of my close friends to this day. He is a brilliant writer. And and you know, I read the first draft of it. He sent it to me. I was at the Daily Show and and he sent it to me, and he said, I want you to read this thing. I'm going to

do a reading of it. And I read this play that he had written, and I thought it was one of the most dangerous things that I had ever read. And I was like, you can't do like, you can't, you can't do this play? What are you what are you nuts? And he was like, no, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. And I was I was like, I was so terrified and excited to do this reading of this play. I didn't know that there

was gonna be a production or anything. I was just like, even just the reading, I was like, this is this character is saying things and doing things that is just we haven't seen this perspective at anywhere. It was post nine eleven. He had written this character that was a a Pakistani lawyer who who sounded who was speaking the words of the conservative right. It was a self hating Muslim um and it was one of the most amazing roles.

So ultimately we ended up doing it at Lincoln Center and uh and I got and it won the Pulitzer there and it was one of the most other than Sakina's restaurant. It was maybe the other most satisfying theatrical experience I've ever had in my life, just playing that role, because there were no roles written like that. It was it was a complex brown man living in a post nine eleven America, dealing with really complicated issues of identity.

And I add wrote it beautifully and dangerously. And you know, he's gone on to become a very successful American playwright, and that was I think his first real play that got a lot of attention. And then I was supposed to do it on Broadway and it was one of the great heartbreaks of my career. I had signed on to do this HBO series. It was called The Brink, Tim Robbins and Jack Black and Yeah, and we did it and it was great and I love all the

people involved with that. But I had signed on to do it and we couldn't make the dates work, and we couldn't the producers of the Broadway production, and so I had to bow out of the Broadway show. And it was one of the great heartbreaks for me of career wise, because I would have given anything to have done it on Broadway. Remember, like the debates that we would have with the audience. You know you're doing something amazing when you walk out of the theater and the

audience all feels like they saw something different. Like you have a family. If people come up to me and they go, when know your character was the villain, they go, no, no no, no, no. The and the husband would argue with this, No, no, she was the villain. No are you kidding me? Like, no, the other this guy was. It was the debate of like of like, who was the bad guy in this play? And I remember like it being and I had said it to me when

we were rehearsing. He said, I want the audience to constantly shift allegiances and to never know, like once they decide that one person is bad, it shifts and they go, oh, wait a minute, no, this person is actually the person I agree with. Oh no, that person is the person I agree. When you're dealing with that kind of writing,

it's really rich and amazing. Actor Asaf Mundy. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you your podcasts. When we come back, ass Off MV shares how becoming a father later in life has changed him. Really, I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's

the Thing from My Heart Radio. After starring on Broadway and winning an Obie ass Off, Monvy showcased his comedic Chops as a daily show correspondent for almost a decade. It was the result of an audition he almost dismissed. August nine, two thousand and six, I get a call from my manager. She says, the Daily Show is auditioning.

They want to see you. And I thought this was going to be some stupid thing where I go down there and I, you know, pretend to be the voice of Saddam Hussein and some stupid thing or something, you know whatever. So they called me and I and I remember that day. I was happened to be writing a letter to my ex girlfriend, who I just found out had gotten engaged. And I was having one of those days where I was like sitting there writing a letter to her because I realized we were never going to

get back together. And so that's the day I'm having. I get this call. I said, can I not go today? Can they see me tomorrow? Because I'm I'm in kind of an emotional state today. I don't feel much like. She said, no, no, it's today. Three o'clock is the cut off. Either you go today or it's done. And I said, okay, fine, I put on a suit and tie.

I walked down to the Daily Show and I I go in and and and the girl there says, you know, here the sides, and she gives me you know, and I and I, you know, I had this kind of cockiness where I was like, I've been on Broadway, I've done TV movie, you know, like this is of course the show, right, yeah, of course. So I said, okay, and so and so I'm looking over all this stuff I gotta say and and she comes in and she says,

John's ready to see you. And I said, oh, you know, can I have a few more minutes to work on this machine? She goes, no, no, it's on the telepromt. Do you don't need to memorize it? And I remember just being like, oh, fucking, this is teleprompted? What is this? This is? This is for amateurs, you know. So I go in there and I didn't know what I was doing.

I meet John Stewart. He's lovely, very friendly. I remember he said, have you ever performed in front of a live audience before and I said, I looked at him and I said, dude, I've been on Broadway and he was like, okay, all right, Mr Broadway and that's Mr Broadway, Yeah, Mr Broadway. And I just did my best Stephen Colbert impression. That's all I knew to do, and I read it

off the thing I get done. John turns to me, he says, that was great, Welcome to the Daily Show, and he shook my hand, and I was on the show that very evening. Jesus. And the crazy thing is, and it so happened that Bruce Springsteen came to see the show that night and he was sitting in the audience and he came backstage after the show to say hi to John On and I got to meet him and he congratulated me and he said, who it was

your first time. You're really good. And so my day went from like writing this letter and sitting there like in this kind of you know, funk, to being on The Daily Show meeting Bruce Springston, best of luck in your future. Mary. At the end of the day, it's Mary, who yeah, exactly. So it was one of those crazy things where my day just and then John, you know, said look, this is a one off, but I want

you back. I'm going to call you back. And so he just kept calling me back for about four or five months, which is sort of like where he was kind of, I think, really kind of auditioning me. And then after about a few months he offered me a contract to be on the show. And then that was just again talk about getting to work with some of the funniest, smartest people in the business. You know, I got.

I got to work with some great kind of on an island of his own really even yeah, and and also just the writers on that show and all the with Oliver and Sam and you know, all those guys and the writers and the producers and and and many of them I still speak to you today, and I'm still friends with and and they are some of the funniest people and smartest people in the business. But I loved about Stewart. What I love was he had this kind of energy feel to him, which was the audience

is screaming, and the audience is cheering. I remember that studio was somewhat smaller, and it wasn't a very big crowd, and everyone's screaming and cheering for him, and he'd sit there at the desk with almost this demeanor like can I talk now? Yeah? Can I get Like he wasn't there to get bathed in love and take a bow and yes, everyone, it's me. He almost had this funny attitude like, you know, are you finished? Can we get on with my monologue now? Please? I mean I thought

he just played it perfectly. Now beyond acres of TV shows and films, and but you worked with Merchant Ivory. Yeah, I met with Merchant and Ivory in New York, like in the eighties, I'll never forget. In the old days, you'd sit in a casting call and every actor in Manhattan that was your competition was in a folding chair down that road. Here's Kevin Bacon, and here's this guy, and here's this guy, and you're all in a row to get to audition for eight men out for John Sales.

You know, you would have cut your hand off to be in a John Sales movie back then, and all this kind of stuff. And you worked with Merchant every what was that experience? Like? It was amazing? You know, that was the movie that I got after seeking his restaurant when that New York Times review came out. It's Smile Merchant came to see the show the next The following week, I wonderfully get cast in a great film

from a play. Yeah, well, he came to see it and he shook my hand after the show, and you know, It's Smile was this god. You know, especially as a young South Asian actor. This guy had made it in a way that very few people in Hollywood had made it, you know, of my background, and he was in so I remember he came up to me and he said, hello, my name is a Smiling Merchant, and I would like to take you out to dinner. And I said, yeah, terrific, and then he took me to a restaurant. So a

couple of weeks later he called. You know, he kept in touch and called me and he said, I want to take you this. And he took me to this restaurant that he claimed that he owned, yet nobody knew him there secret all the restaurants I owned, to keep it a secret. Yeah exactly. So we went there and he didn't even love the Raider's Day. We kept getting it wrong and then and everybody's like I own this place,

you know. Anyway, He gave me this book called The Mystic Massure and he said, I'm making this into a film and I want you to play the lead. And now imagine this is me having done nothing. I've done no like movies. At this point, I don't comes guest spots on Law and Order and you know, and let me schedule here. Yeah, and he said, I want you to play the lead in this movie. We're gonna shoot it in Trinidad, and it's going to be amazing and the legendary actor Owned Puri is going to be in it,

one of the great character actors of Indian cinema. And he said, uh, it's based on this vs. Nightball novel and uh, I want you to play the main character. And you know what was I gonna do? I went home and I read the book in like literally an afternoon. I devoured the book and then I called his office and I said, yes, I'm doing it. I'm very excited. Was it a good experience? It was. It was a tremendous experience. We went to Trinidad, we shot this movie.

It was chaos. The way a Smile worked was he would find a beautiful location and then just say we're gonna shoot a scene here. And I was and of course I'm this young actor coming from theater and you know, and I'm sort of mary. I'm holding my script like this, you know. And he would say, it is a beautiful we shoot a scene right here. We're going to shoot it. And I said, okay, smile, I said, you know what. He said, You're going to get on your bicycle and

you're gonna ride down. They're gonna get a beautiful shot of this beautiful trees and this thing. And so I said to him, and of course I'm this is my first movie, and I'm trying. I'm using all of my craft, you know, like everything I know about being an actor. And I said to him, I said it, smiles, Okay, this is great. This is not in the script, by the way, the scene it's not. It's nowhere in the scream. He said. Don't worry about the script. He said, don't

worry about it. It's just I would go to and I said, okay, script is a mere suggestion. Yeah, And I said to me, I said, small, just tell me this. I said, tell me this. Where am I coming from? Just tell me where I'm coming from? He said, you're coming from your house. I said, okay, great, I said great, great, And where am I going? Just so I know that for my motivation, He said, you are going. And there's a character the owned POORI played in the movie called

rom Logan. He said, you're going to rom Logan's shop. That's where you're going. And I said okay, And then I looked at him and I said it smile. In this movie, it has been well established that rom Logan's shop is across the street from my house. And he said, you are taking the cynic rout. Just get on the bike and ride it. It was always very like running and gunning like. There was one scene where he wanted me and s Jeeb Bosker, who was another actor in

the film. He wanted us to be under this hatch roof during the scene and above us he wanted these chickens and he wanted these chickens just to be hanging out above the roof. And he thought it was very funny to have these chickens. But the chickens wouldn't stay on the roof. They kept running away. So he got the guy, one of the kids on the set. He got him with a staple gun. Oh god, he got

a string. He tied the string to the chickens, and then he stapled the string to the roof, and the chickens were like kicking and they were trying to get out, but they couldn't get away, and he got a shot. He got a shot. Now, I just want to finish by saying that the thing I'm most grateful for or or I'm the most admiring of, is that why you had the opportunity to access great material, when you have that opportunity to present it to you, you didn't squander

that opportunity. And that's really really really amazing to me and really impressive, because when that material comes your way, you don't know when it's gonna come again. Like when like when Wynn said to you, don't pass this up and go off and do this, and then Corpus Christie dies in two weeks. You know he knew, which is that when you have something good in front of you,

that other stuff is gonna take care of itself. Where we want to believe that now you've done all this important work and all this great dramatic work, and you've driven it right off a cliff by hosting a game show. Um uh, you and I have that profound thing in common. And then add to that the fact that you had children at the age of fifty four, that yeah, I'm

sixty four and we've had six kids in eight years. Man, Wow, you've just got You've got a flock of him and I, you know, we had him, and and honestly after say, he's the greatest thing that happened to me. Like he gave me a kind of talk about an access to like humanity and just like as you know, as an artist and just filling up your just your being. You know, there's certain things in life which you don't know that you need until you get them, and then you go, oh,

this is what my soul has been craving. And now he is one of the funniest, smartest little guys. And he just helped. And I realized that, like, oh, I'm glad I did it now. I'm not one of those people that says I wish I'd done it ten years ago, because because I'm mentally ready for it now, you know what I mean. Like I like when I was like in my thirties, I wouldn't have been able to do this.

I would have sucked it up. I would have just been like too much of a mess trying to do other you know, like like I feel like I'm gonna place in my career now where I'm feeling I'm feeling more settled. I feel like, Okay, you know, I can do this. I can pay attention to him in a way that I couldn't have if I had done it much earlier. And what you also are is a man that can keep his family home. You don't have to send your kid to Bahrain to live with his grandparents.

It's true. Yeah, it's true. You have a home, and you've got a steady amount of work, and you've got the respect of people in the business, and things are good to go, and your family is together, and yeah, well listen, this was really a joy. Thank you, my thanks to Assaf Munvey. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.

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