Alan Yang met Aziz Ansari about eight years ago when they were both working on the show, "Parks and Recreation." Yang was a writer, Ansari an actor, but both have worked within several aspects of film and television production. Now their multitalented forces have joined in "Master of None," a Netflix series that they created, produce, write and star in together.
"Master of None" has received a lot of praise for its naturalistic comedy that attacks issues such as race, immigration and gender, without coming off as preachy. As Yang told The Frame, it was important that the characters not only look like the writers' own diverse friend group — whose real lives provide a lot of material — but also that exterior qualifiers such as skin color and sexuality be more circumstantial than anything else when it came to their characterization.
Another theme throughout the show is the often paralyzing glut of choices facing today's coming-of-age generation — hence the title. And the show is structured around a similar resistance against limitations. Yang said he wanted "Master of None" to have the freedom to explore "anything that could be a conversation" in the writers' room, rather than restrict itself to the traditional parameters of the "buddies-hanging-out-in-New-York" sitcom. So storylines and characters might float in and out, according to an episode's topic. Luckily, the resulting aimlessness that might plague the characters doesn't seem to affect the show itself.
Read more of Alan Yang's conversation with The Frame's John Horn below.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Did you start with the title and work backwards from that?
We had actually finished shooting the show and it was still "The Untitled Aziz Ansari Project."
And how did you come up with “Master of None"?
We had brainstormed a thousand titles and we went back to one. Aziz pitched it a long time ago. But it wasn’t really a reverse-engineering thing. We just liked how it sounded. The meaning of it is baked into the premise of the show. We have so many choices that we’re kind of exhausted, and that’s kind of a modern phenomenon. You end up being a master of none because you have too many options.
The show is obviously autobiographical. But you also have writers. So when you’re putting together a writers’ room and you’re trying to get people to reflect those stories that you want to tell in terms of gender and race and sexual orientation, do you try to cast the writers’ room in that way?
There’s a two-part answer. You want talented, brilliant writers. That’s number one. You would never sacrifice talent, so that’s paramount. But the second part of the answer is yes. We want the writers’ room to look like our friends because the show is about our friends and our experiences.
On television, there’s the Aaron Sorkin writing, where people speak in ways that people never speak. And then there’s the writing on this show, which is how people have conversations — the mistakes, the fumbles. Can you talk about how you write dialogue that’s naturalistic and not heightened?
You’re right — tonally, we’re going for naturalism, for people with strong points of view, but not necessarily expressing them so perfectly at all times. [The episode “Ladies and Gentleman”] was a beast to write.
For that episode, we were rewriting until we shot, which was very rare. But something about [it] was so delicate. And it’s based on a real experience. But in our writers’ room we thought we were hitting on something. We asked whether the particular story point — which was that a man introduced himself to four men and then skipped two women — had happened to the female writers, and whether people in the room thought that that was actually sexist. And we were very split.
Because a lot of the guys were saying, But it’s not intentional. It probably was the situation and maybe these people weren’t in his line of work, etc. etc. And there are all these rationalizations. And the women were saying, Listen — this has happened to us multiple times. At least it’s definitely possible that it’s happening. When we would have these conversations, and they were that interesting, and reasonable people disagreed — that’s when we felt like we were hitting on something and maybe we could write it into the show.
But it also seems that you use a lot of your own life, and Aziz’s life in particular. The second episode is when Dev and his friend Brian are curious about their parents’ lives before they emigrated to the United States.
That episode is so near and dear to our hearts. It’s very, very much based in reality. The happy postscript to this story is I’ve actually gotten closer to my parents. Our relationship has improved, both because of the passage of time and my own maturation — but also because of this episode.
The show has been well-received critically. Let’s assume it’s doing well, so probably Netflix will bring it back. Because the show is so dependent on your life experiences, what burden does it place on you and Aziz and your writers to actually have a lot of stuff happen to you?
That’s a really good question. We’ve already emailed about a hypothetical season two. We have some ideas. But the thing we both agreed on was we need a little bit of time to live. Again, having interesting experiences, meeting new people, feeling new emotions, and struggling in some way. All of these things are really important and intrinsic to the show. We kind of likened it to the sophomore album of a band. That sophomore album is often a pitfall because the record label wants it immediately, and the band wrote 10 songs while they were touring. And it’s just not going to be as good. Whereas the first album was the first 25 years of their lives. So yes, we don’t want to phone in a second season, and honestly we don’t want to produce one that is made in haste.
So obviously, if we get one — and this is all hypothetical — if Netflix is kind enough to pick up the show, then we’ll have a conversation with them. But yeah, we want to live a lot. So if you have ideas for adventures for us to go on, let us know.
All episodes of "Master of None" are available for streaming on Netflix.