-Our first guest tonight is a Peabody-winning comedian
and actor you know from "Patriot Act,"
"The Daily Show" and "The Morning Show."
His comedy special, "The King's Jester,"
is streaming now on Netflix. Let's take a look.
-In the Middle East, Indians, Pakistanis, Bengalis,
Sri Lankans, we're the help.
Right? We're the Mexicans of the Middle East.
[ Laughter ]
Even Brown people have their own Brown people.
That's how those buildings got there!
The only people that love to [bleep] on Indians
more than the Saudis are the Brits.
[ Laughter ]
The only difference is,
we love when the Brits [bleep] on us.
[ Laughter ]
There are Indian uncles here tonight that are like,
"Wow! London decor!"
[ Laughter ]
-Please welcome back to the show Hasan Minhaj, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Welcome back to the show. -Thank you!
-Congratulations on the new special.
It must be so great to have it out.
-Yeah, it's a huge relief to just get it out.
I --
We've seen each other recently. -We have.
We were at a -- We did a charity event
for the Natural Resources Defense Council -- NRDC.
-Yes, NRDC. Not the Department of Defense.
It sounds like that. -It does sound like that.
-Yeah, it's these weird --
People don't know this -- we're in the Illuminati,
and we do these --
we do these gigs for, like, billionaires,
and we all know billionaires love, um...
saving the environment and tax loopholes.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
When you can have the same --
When they have both in the same night...
-Yeah, just, mm!
And then you get the call from Seth, and it's a stacked lineup.
-It was a great lineup that night.
-And everybody bombs. -Yeah.
-Like, you do your best material,
and the room is always like, it's the founder of Uber,
Condoleezza Rice and the ghost of Winston Churchill.
[ Laughter ]
And everybody is just shooting air balls.
Like, you know how hard it is when you're just
giving your A material, and they're just like, "Mm."
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
And then, when you angrily yell, "You're not better than me!"
and they're like, "Actually..." [ Laughter ]
-"I own the six media companies that run the world."
You're like, "Please, pick up my pilot."
Yeah, it's good. -You --
We were talking backstage at that event.
You have two kids now. -Yes.
-How have you found fatherhood in the early years?
-It's so crazy, because, for years, my wife and I,
we were trying to have kids, and then we finally had kids.
And now, we have a daughter that's 4 and a son that's 2.
And we just got pushed out of the city.
We were in a two-bedroom apartment.
I was in Hell's Kitchen for years.
And then, when my son was born, I was just asleep
in the living room with my mother-in-law,
and I'm like, "I didn't think my comedy career
was supposed to start -- end where it started."
You know what I mean? [ Laughter ]
Like, I've worked too hard for this.
So we moved to Connecticut, and...
I can feel you judging me.
[ Laughter ] I know everybody's judging me.
We live in Greenwich, Connecticut, which is like,
"Get Out" white. -Yeah, yeah.
-Like, everybody there either works at a hedge fund
or is a war criminal. [ Laughter ]
Like, sometimes a little bit of both, right?
And -- And every morning, I just see all the --
you know, the bankers and traders in Patagonia puffers.
And my daughter will be like, "Who are they?"
I'm like, "Look, babe, it's criminals."
[ Laughter ]
"They're the reason daddy doesn't have a pension.
You know, it's them." [ Laughter ]
But it's so weird.
You get to do parent-teacher conference now, right?
-Yep, it's very nice to be in person and do them again.
-Is it nerve-racking for you? -It is very nerve-racking to me.
They often tell me hard truths about my kids
that I already knew. [ Laughter ]
-For me, it's -- has it hit you that you're a parent?
Because for me, we had our first parent-teacher conference,
in person, and I remember they were saying all this stuff
about my daughter, and I was like,
"What are mom and dad gonna think?"
And they were like, "You're mom and dad."
And they gave us this envelope, and I was like,
"Beena, we gotta hide this. Like, we can't --
Yeah, we don't want mom and --" Yeah.
That's still in me, where I'm 37, but it's still like I'm 27.
Sometimes, me and Beena will be holding hands in public,
and if we see Indian aunties or uncles,
we'll just drop hands and Euro step around them,
and then hold hands again.
I'm like, "They can't tell people in the community
that we're dating." [ Laughter ]
"What am I doing?" -One of the things I enjoy
about being a dad is reading books to my kids.
-Yes. -Are you enjoying that part?
-Okay, so one of the things I love doing now
is reading with the kids,
because we're making new memories.
I remember growing up, I wanted my dad to read to me.
I was like, "Will you read to me?"
And he's like, "I send you to school, so you read to me."
-Oh, interesting. -Yeah!
So, like, now I'll be like, "All right, let's --
let's read together."
Now, are you an old-book or new-book guy?
-We are old-book people, which I'm trying to change.
I appreciate there's a lot of great authors right now.
-Yourself included. -Thank you very much.
Thank you for the mention. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Yes. But the old books are terrifying.
And the new books are just kind of weird.
All right, so the old books, we're doing all the classics.
You know, we're doing "Cat in the Hat,"
and then you're like, "Oh, my God.
This drug-induced cat on ketamine..."
-Yep. -"...bursts in to their house,
two children, alone, destroys it,
with Thing One and Thing Two."
That probably offends somebody. -Yep.
-Really, they're just things? -[ Laughs ]
Within one page, they sober up,
clean up the whole place, they leave.
[ Laughter ]
"Where the Wild Things Are"! -Yeah.
-All right, these negligent parents
send their kid upstairs with nothing to eat.
He has to go across the ocean, befriend monsters,
and then finally comes back to his family.
Horrible.
Then there's "The Giving Tree."
-Yeah, that's a rough one. -Just really --
That's just like "humanity is awful."
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-"Don't trust anybody. They will destroy everything."
And so I was like, "All right, let's try the new books."
-Yeah, you brought one. -So we got gifted this.
-Okay, this was a gift.
-All right, this was a gift we got.
-Okay. "Little Feminist."
-"Little Feminist." [ Laughter ]
Great message.
I think we're all on board. -Yeah.
-Most of the country. [ Laughter ]
And I'm reading it to my daughter, and she goes,
"Oh, my God! Like, Daddy, who's that?"
I go, "That's Queen Elizabeth I."
She goes, "That's amazing."
And I go -- she goes, "Who's that?"
I go, "That's Sacagawea."
And she goes, "Daddy, are they friends?"
[ Laughter ]
And I was like, "Are they..." [ Laughter ]
"Well...no... No."
She goes, "Why?"
And I go, "Well, one could argue...
she's dead because of her."
[ Laughter ]
Then she was like, "All right, who's that?"
She saw this little Brown girl in the corner.
I go, "That's Malala!"
And she goes, "Are they friends?"
[ Laughter ]
And I was like, "Absolutely not."
[ Laughter ]
And she goes, "Well, why?"
And I go, "Well, because Malala is from Pakistan."
And she goes, "Well, why is that a problem?"
And I go, "Well, one could argue..."
[ Laughter ]
"...Pakistan's a country because of her."
[ Laughter ]
And she was like, "Cool!" I'm like, "Not cool."
[ Laughter ]
"You know what? Let's just, um --
Let's just read 'The Giving Tree.'"
[ Laughter ]
-"The Giving Tree" is maybe less triggering.
I've got a lot more to ask you.
We'll be right back with more
from Hasan Minhaj, everybody.