Last night, LinkedIn Executive Editor Dan Roth sat down with former ‘Daily Show’ correspondent Aasif Mandvi as part of the ‘LinkedIn Discussion Series.’
LinkedIn had booked Mandvi a month ago, but the timing was perfect as this week Trevor Noah was tapped to replace Jon Stewart as host of ‘The Daily Show.’ Mandvi discussed his new web series, ‘Halal in the Family,’ and also discussed his time on ‘The Daily Show’ and the Noah news.
When asked about the outrage over Noah’s controversial tweets, Mandvi had this to say:
Via Roth’s follow-up post, here’s what Mandvi said about what success means for his new Web series, Halal in the Family (a send up of Cosby Show-era sit-coms, but with a Muslim family):
I was approached to create something to do social good — sort of speak about an issue that I felt passionate about. I had done a lot of pieces on The Daily Show dealing with Islamophobia … It seemed like the perfect thing to use this as a tool through which to speak about certain issues that Muslim-Americans face and deal with. So it was twofold: a parody of the sitcom format yet it was also addressing certain issues. We crowdsourced it, and got some funding from various organizations, and created four episodes, each 5-minutes long. For me, right now, it’s just about trying to reach as many people as possible… I have no idea what the response is gonna be, I don’t know what success looks like in that way, because, you know, my major objective is to get the message out and have as many people see this as possible.