The sight of Alan Yang and Aziz Ansari jumping from their seats at the Emmy Awards was charming enough. But Yang topped himself on Sunday night with a swoon-worthy speech about the value of seeing characters who look like him on television.
Yang and Ansari won Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the “Master of None” episode “Parents.” Ansari stood by his co-creator looking thrilled, especially as Yang, who has also worked on “South Park” and “Parks and Recreation,” discussed the dearth of Asian characters onscreen.
“There’s 17 million Asian-Americans in this country, and there’s 17 million Italian-Americans,” Yang said after rattling off a typical list of thank-yous. “They have ‘The Godfather,’ ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Rocky,’ ‘The Sopranos.’ We got Long Duk Dong. So we got a long way to go, but I know we can get there. I believe in us. It’s just going to take a lot of hard work. Asian parents out there, if you could just do me a favor and just a couple of you get your kids cameras instead of violins, we would be all good.”
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