Aziz Ansari reveals why he turned down Transformers role

As for Ansari’s potential role in Transformers, it involved Josh Duhamel’s sergeant contacting a call centre during the early encounter with Scorponok – a scene that also involved exploiting a stereotype. “Gay people there can be two, women there can be two, but Asian people, Indian people, there can be one but there can’t be two”. “It ends with Ashton Kutcher’s Pop Chips commercial where he dons brown face and is a Bollywood producer named Raj”.

“[Racial quotas are] a real thing that happens”. Should I not do the accent? They don’t want to say anything that might offend someone else or that might be misconstrued as negative, so they walk a fine line in order to make sure they play it safe and bring no extra criticism onto their careers.

“Should I do an accent?” Ansari turned down a role in the first Transformers film as a call center operator with an accent.

During a panel at EW Fest, Anzari spoke about the real-life inspirations behind the show, as well as touching on a few of the less-than-stellar ways that Hollywood still treats minority actors and characters. But it could have been relatively different for the up-and-comer, had he accepted a role in Michael Bay’s original Transformers film in 2007.

“I understand”, he said. “No one would have been like, ‘Hey, how about we get Aziz to do this ten-episode show and have him play this thoughtful character.’ At best they would just write something that’s a character based on the qualities people have seen already like Tom [Haverford]”.

“Guess what? Every other show is still white people”, he said.

Iranian comedian Maz Jobrani has frequently knocked Hollywood for cornering him into playing terrorists upon learning his background, saying, “When casting directors find out you’re of Middle Eastern descent, they go, ‘Oh, you’re Iranian”. I know there’s “Empire.’ That’s there”. It’s still kind of unbalanced.

The 32-year-old, who created his Netflix show because he wasn’t being cast in more interesting roles, said he and his “Master of None” costar Patel (“Grandfathered”) frequently debate about doing accents on-screen. That’s there. But I think there were 10 black actors before Empire. “‘We can finally make ‘Empire”!