Hasan Minhaj

Hasan Minhaj (born September 23, 1985) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor and television host. Much of his comedy involves Indian culture and the modern American political landscape through the use of satire, observational comedy and black comedy. His Netflix series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and two Webby Awards. In 2019, he was listed in Times annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
After working as a stand-up comedian and appearing in minor television roles, Minhaj came to prominence for his work on The Daily Show as its senior correspondent from 2014 to 2018. He was the featured speaker at the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His first stand-up comedy special, Homecoming King, released on Netflix in May 2017, received positive reviews from critics and won him his first Peabody Award in 2018.
Minhaj left The Daily Show in August 2018 to host a weekly comedy show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, which debuted on Netflix in October 2018. In April 2019, he won his second Peabody Award for Patriot Act. Minhaj released his second Netflix special, Hasan Minhaj: The King's Jester, in 2022, and appeared in season two of the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show in a recurring role.
In September 2023, The New Yorker detailed alleged instances of Minhaj fabricating or embellishing stories used in his comedy specials. The article received widespread publicity and opened a discussion about the moral ethics of comedians and the stories they tell. Minhaj responded to the reporting with evidence describing "omissions and factual errors" in the reporting which "misrepresented my life story".
Early life
Hasan Minhaj was born on September 23, 1985, in Davis, California, to Indian Muslim parents from Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. His parents, Najme and Seema Minhaj (née Usmani) immigrated to the United States from India. After his birth, he and his father, an organic chemist, remained in the U.S. His mother returned to India for eight years to complete medical school, visiting the U.S. after three years to give birth to his sister in 1989. Minhaj attended Davis Senior High School, graduating in 2003. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 2007.
Career
2004–2013
While in college, he became interested in comedy after seeing Chris Rock's Never Scared (2004), the first stand-up special he watched. He began traveling to San Francisco to perform. In 2008, he won Wild 94.9's "Best Comic Standing" competition, which resulted in his working as an opening act for Katt Williams, Pablo Francisco and Gabriel Iglesias. He also worked part-time for the website Ning, an experience he used to write comedy. Minhaj lists Kevin Shea, W. Kamau Bell and Arj Barker as inspirations.
In 2009, Minhaj moved to Los Angeles to perform on NBC's Stand-up for Diversity, on which he was a finalist. In 2011, he was recurring on the TV sitcom State of Georgia and starred in various roles on the MTV hidden camera show Disaster Date. Through posting on YouTube, he was cast as the host of Failosophy on MTV. In 2013, Minhaj appeared in guest roles on Arrested Development and Getting On. He hosted Stand Up Planet in 2013 and a web series, The Truth with Hasan Minhaj, in 2014. In 2014, he voiced Rabi Ray Rana in the video game Far Cry 4.
2014–2016
On November 19, 2014, Minhaj joined The Daily Show as a correspondent, the last one hired by then-host Jon Stewart. Minhaj was asked to come in for an audition with new material after he sent in a tape of him performing an idea for a Daily Show segment, but he initially panicked as he had no other material prepared. The Friday before Minhaj's audition, Ben Affleck and Bill Maher got into a heated exchange about Islam on Maher's show, and Minhaj used this for a new sketch he called "Batman vs. Bill Maher".
On June 18, 2016, Minhaj performed a set as the host of the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner. The set gained attention for his condemnation of the United States Congress' inaction in passing gun control legislation. On April 29, 2017, Minhaj was the featured speaker at the 2017 White House Correspondents' Dinner, where he took on the traditional role of roasting Washington, D.C. society, national politics, current events, the current president, the Washington press corps and the American media. He criticized U.S. President Donald Trump, who was boycotting the dinner, calling him the "liar in chief," and stating: "Only in America can a first-generation, Indian American Muslim kid get on the stage and make fun of the president." He also reminded the press to do their job, and added: "I want to thank all of you. I want to thank Woodward and Bernstein for inspiring a generation of journalists, and I would like to thank Donald Trump for inspiring the next."
Minhaj's one-man show, Homecoming King, debuted Off-Broadway in October 2015. The show featured a central theme of the immigrant experience in the United States today, illustrated with stories from Minhaj's life as a second-generation Indian-American Muslim. He later turned the show into his first stand-up special, Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King, which premiered on Netflix on May 23, 2017. The special was filmed at the Mondavi Center at Minhaj's alma mater, UC Davis, in January 2017, and won a television Peabody Award.
2017–present
In March 2018, Netflix announced that Minhaj would host his own weekly show on the platform. The new show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, premiered on October 28, 2018. It received an initial order of 32 episodes. Patriot Act explores the modern cultural, political and economic landscape. When writing episodes about the show, Minhaj frequently excluded or limited the role that researchers played in developing content and could be dismissive of fact checkers. Multiple female producers complained of abuse, mistreatment and harassment while on the set, and threatened legal action, which was ultimately settled out of court. In April 2019, Minhaj was listed among TIMEs 100 most influential people in the world, and won his second Peabody Award for Patriot Act. Some months after Minhaj's episode on the student loan crisis aired, he was called to testify regarding the issue before the US Congress in September 2019. In August 2020, Minhaj announced the series would not be renewed after 40 episodes. On November 27, 2018, Comedy Central aired a special titled Goatface, featuring Minhaj, Fahim Anwar, Asif Ali and Aristotle Athari. In February 2019, Minhaj played on the "Away" roster during the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at the Bojangles' Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In September 2019, he testified during a U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing on student loan debt.
On November 13, 2020, it was announced that Minhaj would join season two of the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show in a recurring role. In 2021-2022, Minhaj performed a comedy tour across the United States that culminated in the release of a Netflix special The King's Jester in October 2022. In 2022, Minhaj voiced The Riddler in the first Warner Bros.–Spotify Batman podcast, Batman Unburied. He is scheduled to reprise the role in the 2023 podcast The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark.
On October 30, 2022, Minhaj appeared as a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy!, where his animated and over-the-top reactions earned him the dubious accolade "most annoying contestant ever" by the show's longtime fans. In February 2023, Minhaj returned to The Daily Show to host it. He was among many prominent individuals to serve short stints hosting the show upon the departure of host Trevor Noah. Other hosts include Wanda Sykes, Jordan Klepper, Roy Wood Jr., John Leguizamo and Al Franken. In March 2023, Minhaj hosted the 38th Independent Spirit Awards. The same year, he had a supporting role in the Jennifer Lawrence comedy film No Hard Feelings (2023).
Influences
Minhaj has said his comedy influences include Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Trevor Noah, Junot Diaz, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock and Stephen Colbert.
Personal life and family
Minhaj is Muslim. He considers himself "non-dogmatic" and has expressed liberal Islamic beliefs.
In January 2015, Minhaj married his longtime partner Beena Patel, whom he met in college. Patel received a Doctor of Public Health in 2013, and has since worked with homeless patients and is a management consultant for MedAmerica. According to Minhaj in his comedy special, The King's Jester, he and his wife dated for ten years before he proposed to her. Minhaj and Patel are both second-generation Indian Americans; she is a Hindu of Gujarati descent, and he is a Muslim of Uttar Pradeshi descent, something he discussed in his comedy special Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King.
Minhaj and Patel lived in New York City until the pandemic, but have since moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. They have a daughter (born April 2018) and a son (born February 2020).
Minhaj has spoken about his and his wife's struggle to conceive. After his wife convinced him to go to a fertility clinic, it was determined the issue was with his fertility rather than hers. Minhaj underwent a varicocele repair procedure, after discovering there was too much blood in his scrotum. The couple was able to have two children.
In addition to English, Minhaj is fluent in Hindi. He is a fan of the Sacramento Kings, having grown up nearby. His son had a Kings-themed first birthday party, and he has considered becoming part-owner of the team.
2023 The New Yorker article
Initial reporting
In the September 2023 issue of The New Yorker, journalist Clare Malone detailed instances of Minhaj embellishing stories that had been parts of his acts. Hasan told Malone: "My comedy Arnold Palmer is seventy percent emotional truth—this happened—and then thirty percent hyperbole, exaggeration, fiction." The reporting accused Minhaj of allegedly fabricating other stories of Islamophobia and threats made against him and his family.
In the article it cites three examples as mistruths:
A story from Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King (2017) in which Minhaj originally described being in a relationship with a white girl in high school and then suffering a hurtful breakup with her parents rejecting him because of his race. Key details, such as the validity of their relationship and alleged doxxing of her and her family, were called into question.
The second was a story used in his special The King's Jester (2022), in which he was sent anthrax, which fell on his daughter and she was later hospitalized. Minhaj in the article clarified that, while he was sent white powder, it wasn't anthrax and it didn't spread to his daughter, who was nearby, but it could have, which his wife pointed out to him. Hasan clarified that he added the hospital scene in his special because he wanted the audience to feel the "shock and fear" that he and his wife felt.
The final story, also in The King's Jester, centers around an FBI informant named "Brother Eric", a white man who converted to Islam, and gained the trust of the mosque community. The validity of the event in the special was called into question, and Hasan stated the basis of the story was inspired by his experience and altercations with undercover law enforcement.
Minhaj admitted that he had cast fictional events as fact, but said his stories were "emotional truths" meant to convey the difficulties Muslim Americans face, not real events from in his personal life. The New York Times discussed Minhaj in the context of increasing public scrutiny on fact-checking in comedic acts, particularly when real people are involved, versus the norm of being able to tell general emotional stories without formal review processes.
Response from Minhaj
In his first show since the controversy, Minhaj did not address the issue and avoided personal stories in his brief set. On October 26, 2023 Hasan Minhaj addressed the reporting by Clare Malone of The New Yorker in a 20-minute video where he described the reporting was "needlessly misleading". In the video, he used evidence such as audio recordings of the The New Yorker interview, and text messages that he claims disproved the initial reporting. He also released a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, writing: "There were omissions and factual errors in The New Yorker article that misrepresented my life story, so I wanted to give people the context and materials I provided The New Yorker with full transparency".
Filmography
Film
Television
Podcasts
Video games
Awards and nominations
See also
Improvisational Comedy
Indians in the New York City metropolitan area
Political satire
Notes
References
External links
21st-century American comedians
21st-century American male actors
American male comedians
American male television actors
American male actors of Indian descent
American comedians of Indian descent
American stand-up comedians
Muslim male comedians
American Muslims
Comedians from California
Male actors from California
The New Yorker people
Peabody Award winners
University of California, Davis alumni
People from Davis, California
Davis Senior High School (California) alumni
1985 births
Living people