Aziz Ansari is speaking out about the sexual misconduct allegations that were leveled against him during the height of the “Me Too” movement in 2018.
He spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about his new comedy movie, Good Fortune, and he was asked to reflect on the incident and his controversial handling of the situation — and why he didn’t consider himself to be on a “break” after the damaging essay was published.
The Master of None creator was the subject of an essay at Babe.net called, “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.” In it, the comedian was accused of unwanted sexual aggression in his apartment against a then-22-year-old with the pseudonym “Grace,” just days after the 2017 Primetime Emmy Awards in which he celebrated a win for his Hulu sitcom. The piece described a scene in which Grace repeatedly indicated, both verbally and non-verbally, her disinterest in sex but felt pressured by Ansari to perform certain acts anyway.
The story also revealed that after the incident at issue, the woman wrote to Ansari to express how upset she was, telling him, “I just want to take this moment to make you aware of [your] behavior and how uneasy it made me.” His recorded response was, “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”
In a subsequent statement about the story, Ansari said at the time, “In September of last year, I met a woman at a party. We exchanged numbers. We texted back and forth and eventually went on a date. We went out to dinner, and afterwards we ended up engaging in sexual activity, which by all indications was completely consensual. The next day, I got a text from her saying that although ‘it may have seemed okay,’ upon further reflection, she felt uncomfortable. It was true that everything did seem okay to me, so when I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said. I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue.”
The piece would later spark a heated public debate over whether Ansari’s actions were part of the same predatory culture in Hollywood as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, and other high-profile cases.
Ansari later appeared in a Netflix special in July 2019 titled Aziz Ansari: Right Now and spoke up about the matter, saying, “There’s times I felt scared. There’s times I felt humiliated. There’s times I felt embarrassed. And ultimately I just felt terrible that this person felt this way. I always think about a conversation I had with one of my friends where he was like, ‘You know what, man? That whole thing made me think about every date I’ve ever been on.’ And I thought, ‘Wow! That’s pretty incredible.’ If this made not just me but other people be more thoughtful, then that’s a good thing, and that’s how I feel about it.”
In his new THR interview, Ansari responded to criticisms that his Netflix address didn’t include a direct comment to his accuser. To that, he said, “I mean, I apologized to the person personally, right? When it happened.”
Ansari also denied that the time spent away from the spotlight between the essay and his special was intentional. “It wasn’t really a break, per se. I did that tour, and I wanted to address it in the special because people were curious about how I felt about the whole experience. So I felt like I had to talk about it in the special,” he told THR.
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
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