Aasif Mandvi was born Asif Mandviwala in Bombay, India and his family moved to Bradford, England when he was a toddler. When Aasif was 16 his father relocated the family one more time to Florida. His father was a small business owner without a head for business and his mother was a stay at home mom who couldn’t cook as well as her husband. Despite having an arranged marriage Aasif was raised in a loving, supportive family.
Aasif dreamed of being an actor from a young age and received support from his family. Once he struck out to make a career in New York he realized that most parts for South Asians in television were as terrorists, cab drivers or doctors. He then spent nine years on the Daily Show as the Senior Muslim Corespondent; as the title of this review indicates he only spend eleven pages discussing his time on the show. It was interesting to discover he trained to be a more serious actor but it felt like he doesn’t consider he most well known role important enough to discuss in even a moderate length. Actually, a chief complaint would be the brevity of the whole memoir.
Also, the voyeur in me was a bit disappointed he didn’t include any pictures!
All in all No Land’s Man was probably the least interesting “B List Actor writes a memoir” I’ve read- and I’ve read quite a few the last 3 months or so.