The Emmy Award-winning comedy show Saturday Night Live has begun to embrace diversity, both onscreen and behind the scenes.
In 2016, Indian-American actor Aziz Ansari became Saturday Night Live’s first host of South Asian descent. The late-night comedy show recently announced that Pakistani-American Kumail Nanjiani will be hosting the October 14 episode of the new season. And now Indian-American Nimesh Patel has been added as a new writer for the upcoming Season 43 of the show, according to Hollywood Reporter.
Patel’s most notable writing credit is that he wrote the speech Indian-American comedian Hasan Minhaj delivered at the 2017 White House correspondents’ dinner during which he roasted US President Donald Trump.
In hiring Patel (who jokes about keeping his Hindu papers on him at all times lest he be mistaken for a radical terrorist), Vanity Fair notes that “Saturday Night Live is better placed than ever to dig into this particular American perspective.”
Patel, who has also starred in the TV series, Comedy Knownout, is also credited with writing special material for the 88th Annual Academy Awards.
Patel would definitely be an asset for the show which derives most of its humour from current political affairs.
“I wanted Bobby Jindal to win… he’s the Indian guy,” Vanity Fair quoted Patel as joking on stage at the Comedy Cellar in 2016. “Not because I believe in his politics but because I want a career on SNL and that’s the only way that was going to happen.”
“If you Google me, I am the first result. And most every other Nimesh Patel is a doctor. Which means if my parents Google me, they get their son, and then a list of everything they wanted their son to be,” Patel writes in his bio on his website, adding that he likes “family, sarcasm, water, the Lakers, and dancing while drunk.”