Hasan Minhaj Shares Audio Clip of Infamous ‘Misleading’ New Yorker Interview: ‘I’m Not a Psycho’
Hasan Minhaj is addressing his now-infamous New Yorker interview from September 2023 that alleged the comedian embellished his stand-up act.
Minhaj in the article denied “manipulating” audiences with his fabricated or exaggerated life stories, including racist encounters with the FBI, police officers, and an anthrax scare involving his young daughter at their personal residence.
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The “Patriot Act” comedian released a 20-minute video to The Hollywood Reporter to call out the “factual errors” in The New Yorker article, as well as play an audio clip of his conversation with the reporter to provide his full quotes.
“There were omissions and factual errors in The New Yorker article that misrepresented my life story, so I wanted to give people the context and materials I provided The New Yorker with full transparency,” Minhaj said. “With everything that’s happening in the world, I’m aware even talking about this now feels so trivial. But being accused of ‘faking racism’ is not trivial. It’s very serious, and it demands an explanation.”
He continued, “To everyone who read that article, I want to answer the biggest question that’s probably on your mind: Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psycho? Underneath all that pomp, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that. The reason I feel horrible is because I’m not a psycho. But this New Yorker article definitely made me look like one. It was so needlessly misleading, not just about my stand-up, but also about me as a person. The truth is, racism, FBI surveillance and the threats to my family happened. And I said this on the record.”
Minhaj added, “I thought I had two different expectations built into my work: my work as a storytelling comedian and my work as a political comedian, where facts always come first,” he says. “That is why the fact-checking on ‘Patriot Act’ was extremely rigorous. The fact-checking in my congressional testimony, deeply rigorous. But in my work as a storytelling comedian, I assumed the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry. And I totally get why a journalist would be interested where that line sits. I just wish the reporter had been more interested in their own premise. Someone genuinely curious about truth in stand-up wouldn’t just fact check my specials. They would fact check a bunch of specials. They would establish a control group, a baseline, to see how far outside the bounds I was in relation to others. They wouldn’t just cherry pick a few stories.”
Minhaj concluded, “I just want to say to anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by my stand-up, I am sorry. I made artistic choices to express myself and drive home larger issues affecting me and my community, and I feel horrible that I let people down.”
A spokesperson for The New Yorker told IndieWire that Minhaj’s video confirms “exactly” what was reported in the piece.
“Hasan Minhaj confirms in this video that he selectively presents information and embellishes to make a point: exactly what we reported. Our piece, which includes Minhaj’s perspective at length, was carefully reported and fact-checked,” the statement reads. “It is based on interviews with more than twenty people, including former ‘Patriot Act’ and ‘Daily Show’ staffers; members of Minhaj’s security team; and people who have been the subject of his standup work, including the former F.B.I. informant ‘Brother Eric’ and the woman at the center of his prom-rejection story. We stand by our story.”
Minhaj had previously issued a statement in response to The New Yorker profile, as shared with IndieWire in September 2023.
“All my standup stories are based on events that happened to me. Yes, I was rejected from going to prom because of my race. Yes, a letter with powder was sent to my apartment that almost harmed my daughter. Yes, I had an interaction with law enforcement during the war on terror. Yes, I had varicocele repair surgery so we could get pregnant. Yes, I roasted Jared Kushner to his face,” Minhaj said. “I use the tools of standup comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form. You wouldn’t go to a Haunted House and say ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ — The point is the ride. Standup is the same.”
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