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Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune premiered at the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend. Ansari wrote, directed and stars in the movie along with Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Sandra Oh, and Keke Palmer. Great cast! And here’s the logline: “In GOOD FORTUNE, a well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker (Aziz Ansari) and a wealthy venture capitalist (Seth Rogen).” Keanu as an angel? Yes, please. While promoting the movie at TIFF, Ansari revealed to People Mag that he doesn’t have a smartphone, doesn’t use email, and doesn’t have anything to do with the social media accounts in his name. But he does have a flip phone and landline! And, presumably, some ink and papyrus and a messenger pigeon. I say that with reverence, not sarcasm.
Aziz Ansari is a Luddite and proud of it.
…He still doesn’t have a smartphone. And when it comes to technology fasts, “I’m starving myself,” Ansari quips at the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 7, a day after the premiere of Good Fortune (in theaters Oct. 17).
“I have a flip phone,” the writer-director-star, 42, says. “I block pretty much every website from my computer. I don’t have an email address… I have a landline. I love the landline!”
How long has he resisted going back to a smartphone? Ansari pauses to think. “I don’t know. I stopped using email during season one of Master of None, so that’s like almost 10 years,” he says.
“But look, I’m not ignorant of my privileges with my life,” he adds. “I have an assistant and all these things that help take care of things and manage things.”
An email-free life isn’t “practical for everybody,” acknowledges the Emmy winner. “But for me, it helps me keep a clear head to help me write and do what’s more important for my job.”
Lionsgate’s Good Fortune stars Ansari, Reeves, Seth Rogen, Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer, and follows a “well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel” who “meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker (Ansari) and a wealthy venture capitalist (Rogen),” per an official synopsis.
“He just was so funny,” recalls Ansari of working with Reeves. “We started filming and it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s really on fire here. We got to get some more Gabriel bits in here.’ It’s a comedy writer’s dream.”
As for social media, the Parks & Recreation alum admits that assistants are in charge and that his Instagram account is “not me.” He quips, “Hopefully there’s nothing super offensive being posted on there. I hope it’s all good.”
Digital footprint upkeep, he says, is “not what I’m good at. What I’m good at is sitting there writing a script or something. That’s where I want to put my energy. Or to watching movies or reading. That’s the better use of my head space for me.”
Two years ago Michael Cera lamented that he was getting lonely as a non-smartphone user. Be lonely no more, Michael! It feels like we’re hearing from more celebrities about their low-tech practices — Jeffrey Wright, Margaret Qualley, Wes Anderson, David Harbour. Ok, not that many, but it’s a start! With Ansari, I really appreciate that he so readily acknowledges what makes it all possible for him to tap out of tech: assistants! Oh, the creatively rich and digitally pure life I could lead if I only had an assistant taking care of the minutiae of living, sigh. (My dog is curled up next to me as I’m writing this and I feel like he’s saying, “I have someone who takes care of everything for me and I don’t know how I’d get all my toy fetching and napping done without her!”)
Getting back to Good Fortune, I watched the trailer and cannot begin to enthuse enough about how charming and dorky and hilarious Keanu Reeves is playing his angel. His main task on earth is trying to prevent people from texting while driving, and his meddling in the lives of Aziz & Seth’s characters is a detour, unwelcome from his supervisor angel, Sandra Oh. Ansari isn’t kidding when he touts how funny Keanu is; it’s the earnestness in his delivery that makes his lines sing.
Photos credit: BlayzenPhotos/Backgrid, Getty, Janet Mayer/INSTARimages.com
“But look, I’m not ignorant of my privileges with my life,” he adds. “I have an assistant and all these things that help take care of things and manage things.”
And that’s the key. The privilege of wealth and having help so that he doesn’t have to rely on those things. I couldn’t give up email or my smartphone but maybe I can pull away from social media. I got rid of Twitter and Facebook but still have Instagram, Threads and even a Bluesky account, so something has got to give.
I think I may go back to a landline phone just because that seems like a safe option.
This is the latest luxury that only the wealthiest people can afford: no tech for their kids and themselves. We are just at the start of what is about to become the next big status symbol.
Hope his views on acceptable behaviour on a date advanced more than his tech.
Yeah, I couldn’t look at him the same way again after that disclosure. Always the “nice guy” who can’t take no for an answer.
I remember and often think of a quote of Aziz’s years ago, something about how he’s “addicted to new information” and I have the same thing. It’s what keeps me from deleting my IG, all the funny things and dog videos I’d miss. But I’m not really missing anything. I guess I need a flip-phone also
Trailer is OK. I feel the actors are trying too hard to be funny (but I love the cast), but the movie feels like a possible mix between Dogma and Trading Places.
So cute – def Bill & Ted vibes.
Will def see this.