Aziz Ansari Interview For ’30 Minutes or Less’

In the action-comedy ’30 Minutes or Less,’ Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a small town pizza delivery guy whose mundane life collides with the big plans of two wanna-be criminal masterminds (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson). The volatile duo kidnaps Nick and forces him to rob a bank. With mere hours to pull off the impossible task, Nick enlists the help of his ex-best friend, Chet (Aziz Ansari). As the clock ticks, the two must deal with the police, hired assassins, flamethrowers, and their own tumultuous relationship. ’30 Minutes or Less’ is set for release August 12th in the US, and October 16th in the UK. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Aziz Ansari, Nick Swardson and Michael Peña.

What drew you to this project?

Aziz Ansari: I initially read the script and just thought the idea of doing a comedy set around a bank robbery was such a cool idea, it hadn’t been done before. I also thought the idea of Ruben Fleischer, the director of ‘Zombieland’ doing it would be really cool, so I got on board. They also told me there would be a lot of Skittles on set, whenever I wanted I could eat Skittles, I really love Skittles so I was like, “Ok, I’m in.”

It’s a weird situation for these guys to be friends, who’ve had this huge falling out, then they’re put back together under the situation of one of them having a bomb strapped to them and being forced to rob a bank. It’s just kind of a fun scenerio to put these guys in, I thinks that’s part of the fun of the movie.

Was there a lot of freedom on the set? Like if you want to move a different way, say a different line, run something else. Did you have a lot of freedom, maybe more so than some other films?

Aziz Ansari: Yeah, Ruben’s really cool about letting us improvise and whenever we do a scene or rehearsal I kind of like think about it as “Is this working? Are the jokes right there? Is there a way to punch this up at all?” I go in every scene I do just being like “Alright. Is there any way to make this better? Is there any way to change this? Are there any other jokes or anything that could help?” And it’s not just improvising like ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway.’ I think when people talk about improvising it turns into this silly thing like, “Oh, there’s like a hula hoop there and I’m like ‘Oh what’s going on here? Is this a really big ring?’” It’s not that at all. It’s very focused. It’s almost like rewriting in the moment and really thinking about the scene and any jokes I make I try to make sure it’s on story and helps the characters and makes sense with the movie.

Ruben’s been cool about, any scene we do he’s always telling me, “If there’s anything you want to try – try it. Just try it.! The bank robbery scene we shot was so fun because I’ve never done a bank robbery and that’s like the funnest thing to ever do. You just get to yell whatever nonsense you want, it was such an amazing opportunity. It was one of the funnest scenes I’ve ever gotten the opportunity to shoot and we come up with stuff he likes. He’s always like “It’s so great.” and it’s just a fun process.

With the comedy aspects is that something that naturally comes out of you, or is that something that you have to prep for?

Aziz Ansari: That’s my personality, I’m not quiet. I mean, obviously someone like Randy is a little bit crazy and then Tom from ’Parks and Recreation’ is a different thing and you know this character. I try to do them all a little differently and I guess ultimately my personality will come out through them in different ways. This is really fun because I’ve never done any acting where it’s such a serious situation where it’s like we’re robbing banks we’re in a car chase – these are all crazy situations. I always find movies where it’s taking normal people and putting them in extraordinary situations to be interesting. That’s what I liked about the script, I can’t think of any bank robbery comedy where it’s about two normal guys. It’s kind of like ‘Superbad’ meets ‘Heat,‘ which is a cool combo, and it’s just fun doing a normal guy that’s robbing a bank.

When we were shooting the bank robbery, the day before I was like watching ‘Heat’ over and over again and I was like, “What if this guy is trying to be like Robert De Niro in ‘Heat‘? So I was trying to be like an idiot trying to do De Niro in ‘Heat.’ I was trying to sound cool like, “Think about things you love in your life.” Ruben had a folder of all these famous bank heists – ‘Heat,’ ‘Out of Sight,’ ‘Raising Arizona.’ I just watched all of them. I was like “Man, a bank robbery sounds like a cool scene and it’s only in a few movies.” It’s really cool to get to do one.

There’s been some great car chase scenes in film…

Aziz Ansari: Yeah, I also like the one from ‘Point Break’ and one movie that I watched that I hadn’t seen before was ‘The Killing’ by Stanley Kubrick. Oh, and the car chases in ‘Steel Magnolias’ are amazing.