By now, everyone with a Netflix subscription or at least some working knowledge of stand-up comedy knows who Hasan Minhaj is. The former The Daily Show correspondent released one of 2017’s most acclaimed comedy specials with Homecoming King, and now he’s releasing new episodes of Patriot Act every week. Yet before all of this came about, he created sketches with fellow comics Aristotle Athiras, Asif Ali and Fahim Anwar in the group Goatface.
Goatface comedy troupe talks Comedy Central special
On Tuesday, the four friends will reunite for Goatface: A Comedy Special on Comedy Central, which sees the former YouTubers making their television debut. While this all might seem new to general audiences, however, the troupe has been working together off and on since 2011. And as Athiras, Ali and Anway explained it in a recent interview with Metro, they won’t be stopping anytime soon — no matter how busy everyone gets.
“We’re very excited about where this is going to go,” says Ali, who adds that they’re especially “interested in seeing how to public reacts to” Tuesday’s special.
“It will be nice to get some fresh eyes on it, too, because we’re so close to it,” notes Anwar. “It’s hard to laugh after saying the same thing 100 times, so it’ll be really cool to see it for the first time in other peoples’ eyes.”
Now that their first comedy special is locked, the guys also know what unused sketches or ideas they’ve been sitting on can be used for whatever comes next. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re going to spoil anything before that happens.
“There are a lot of ideas that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t do,” says Ali. “There’s one that I really love, but it ended up being so expensive. Too expensive, in fact. These are things that you don’t really think about when you’re just making YouTube videos with your buddies.”
“When you’re just bound by your imagination and whatever you can think of, it’s not until someone else gets involved as says, ‘You can’t do that’ because it would require a five-day shoot,” adds Anwar, who can’t stop himself from laughing.
Ali and Athiras can’t stop laughing either, which quickly turns the interview’s closing moments into a series of riffs.
“They’d look at us like we’re psychos and say, ‘What do you think we are? The people that made Avatar? We can’t make this with the budget we’ve allotted for you!’” jokes Athiras, who also directed the special. “The cool thing, though, is we have a lot of ideas already banked and ready to go for something else. So if and when they’re ready for another special, we’ll be ready to go, too.”
Goatface premieres Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central.
