Posted in: Comedy Central, TV | Tagged: Aasif Mandvi, comedy central, Evil, exclusive, interview, the daily show

The Daily Show Alum Aasif Mandvi on Blurred Lines Between News, Satire

Aasif Mandvi (Evil) spoke with Bleeding Cool about how the line between journalism and satire has blurred since his days with The Daily Show.

Aasif Mandvi has been working in Hollywood for over 35 years since his debut on TV's Miami Vice. While mostly known for his comedic work, he's done far more than his share of drama, like his longest-running TV series Evil, currently in its final season, offering some levity and comedic sass to offset some of the series' darker themes. One place that helped him fine-tune his comedic chops was his time on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, where he spent 10 years as a correspondent from 2006 to 2015. His final episode as correspondent was Jon Stewart's final episode of his initial run as host before his return in 2024 as the weekly Monday host.

Since Mandvi's departure, there's been a bit of a maelstrom in politics in the form of Donald Trump and the media coverage surrounding the former president that's been ongoing as he faces his third election and third Democratic frontrunner opponent in Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. While promoting the finale of the Paramount+ series, Mandvi, who's made return appearances since on The Daily Show, spoke to Bleeding Cool about how revolutionary the Comedy Central series was at the time, but the current state of the news cycle led to unintended copycats and consequences.

The Daily Show Alum Aasif Mandvi on How Journalism Has Become a Caricature of Itself

Bleeding Cool: How do you compare your time as a correspondent on 'The Daily Show' disseminating the news cycles to what the current generation of journalists and satirists have to deal with now?

I'm not much in that world anymore. When I started on 'The Daily Show,' the idea of a new show satirizing the news lived in that one area. Now it feels like the entire news is satire of itself. Journalism starts to feel like a satire of itself. It does feel like the thing we satirized is now everything. It's now CNN. There is no longer a sense of hard journalism. It's all bought and paid for by corporations, their interests, and lobbyists. It's no longer… there's no one; there's no sort of like… nobody asking the hard questions. There's no hard investigative journalism going on in the way there used to be. It all feels like it's become 'The Daily Show' or a version of 'The Daily Show.'

The series finale of Evil, which also stars Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Andrea Martin, Michael Emerson, Christine Lahti, and Wallace Shawn, streams on August 22nd on Paramount+.

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