Athiras: In all honesty, just by nature we're good ambassadors. We don't even have to try. I think we're very good representations. It's definitely not a must we have to work out or try to do.

Minhaj: If you do amazing, great work and write to the highest level of your ability, then when that work is acknowledged, I think that people after the fact put that value on it. You don't have to already think about the article that's going to come out about your work being seminal or groundbreaking, you just have to tell a really, really great authentic story. Then let the people determine whether or not that resonated with them and whether it's indicative of anything larger. But I think if you try to reverse engineer that, that's a problem.

Anwar: It would be very hard to live that way. I do this because I love comedy and I'm chasing my passions and following my heart. I don't do it to inspire the children. But if that happens, that's great, you know.

Athiras: I do it for the money.

I’m gonna make that your only quote.

Athiras: Please. Put it in there. I do it for the money, and when I say money, I mean the children.

You obviously all have a lot of shared experiences, but you also do come from different backgrounds. Do you think there's something universal to the experience of being brown in America right now?

Anwar: I think there is, and that's why it seems like this show has an opportunity to really resonate. Because there's this giant hole in America that hasn't been spoken to. There's gotta be millions of people like me.

Athiras: We're all individual. We're all snowflakes. But at the same time we do have very shared, very similar experiences. Sometimes Hasan will be talking about one of his experiences growing up in Davis and I’m just like, are you telling my story? 'Cause that's like exactly some of the things that have happened to me in the past.

Do you have an example?

Athiras: It’s really sad. I had an internship at a studio in college. It was kind of a hard internship to get, so I was super excited. At the ground floor of the building there was this little café, and I'd go down there and I'd get like a brownie or something, and then a green tea, because I was trying to be healthy. And then I would come upstairs and just try to do everything... I had to copy strips, I was being a really good intern.

One time I was down there and this guy was staring at me really hard and I thought, maybe this guy has a crush on me. I just ignore the guy. And I went upstairs and then all of a sudden there was this alert, like a fire alarm. The security guy came upstairs and said, "I don't want anybody to be alarmed, but there's a possible terrorist attack on the building. We all need to evacuate and go outside." And so, I went outside and I was just like, "Oh my god, [this is] fuckin' crazy."

I go outside and everybody's lined up, and the security guy is standing outside and that guy from the café comes, and then the security guy came up to me and said, "Excuse me, sir do you work here?" And I said, "yeah." And I had a badge with my photo on it. Then he talked to my supervisor, and I was questioned for a good ten to 15 minutes. The whole thing was because that guy thought that I was some kind of terrorist threat to the building. And I was just there to get a brownie. And I'm telling you, I was there like a half an hour before I was supposed to start. I was doing everything to be the best. I just wanted to make the best impression I possibly could, and it was all ruined because of this assumption based on the way I looked. And that kind of crushed me. I did kind of feel like all hope was lost. I was like, this is not fair. You know what I mean?