2016 Emmy Awards: Aziz Ansari Becomes The First South Asian Actor To Be Nominated As A Lead Actor

Los Angeles: Indian-American actor Aziz Ansari has become the first ever South Asian actor nominated for a lead role in a TV series, earning a bid for his portrayal of Dev Shah in Netflix’s Master of None.

The series, which Ansari also created, wrote and directed, was praised for its diversity and progressive storytelling — going so far as to humorously include a “token white friend” as opposed to the usual stereotype of that friend being a person of color. 

“I am very happy but it is a very specific accomplishment,” Ansari told USA Today after the nominations were announced on Thursday.

Ansari, who is also nominated for writing and directing Master of None, co-created the Netflix comedy with Alan Yang.

The 33-year-old actor plays Dev, an actor trying to make it in New York. Master of None, which is up for best comedy, crystallized diversity challenges in Hollywood in the show’s fourth episode, titled Indians on TV.

“I think every minority actor runs into that. You hear people say things like, ‘Oh, they already got the black guy.’ Or, ‘Oh, they already got their Asian lady.’ It kind of feels like, to minority actors that I’ve spoken with, once they have one (minority actor cast) they’re like, OK, we’ve placated the ‘diversity issue.’ That was coming from a real place,” Ansari said.

“If you’re a minority, you’re experiencing all sorts of casual racism all the time. And at a certain point, you just get numb to a lot of it, and you’re like, whatever.” Ansari said he and Yang are currently busy writing season 2 of Master of None, which will debut on Netflix next.

The 2016 Emmy Awards, which is the 68^th Primetime Emmy Awards will take place on September 18^th, 2016.