Earlier this year, Aziz Ansari made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, parodying FBI Director Kash Patel. The spot was so popular that the US comedian and actor was featured two more times in the latest season, marking his first stints on the sketch show since he hosted an episode in 2017.
You might think that Ansari’s role was weeks or even months in the making. But as he revealed on the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Uncut podcast ahead of this weekend’s season 52 premiere of SNL, it all came together within a week.
“I happened to be in New York, and that article came out about that guy, Kash Patel,” Ansari recalled. “And I’m friendly with people on the show. So I texted Colin Jost. I said, ‘Hey, I saw this, and someone told me there’s all this stuff on the internet about me playing this guy. Just so you know, I’m in town. I think it’d be really funny. Let me know.’
“And then he said, ‘Okay, that’s great. Let me talk to Lorne [Michaels].'”
Ansari said that the initial text was sent “on a Monday or Tuesday” and he had assumed by Friday that nothing would come from the idea.
Until Jost wrote back Friday evening.
“He was like, ‘Hey, Lorne loves it! Can you be here at like 10.30 for rehearsal?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,'” Ansari said. And then I get there, and I’m like, ‘Can you send me anything before?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, we’re still working on it.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ I’m just worried. I just want to do a good job.”
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Karoline Leavitt holds a press briefing at the White House with Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel pic.twitter.com/08tr0hx7Er
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) May 3, 2026
“And I get there, and he hands me the pages. I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I didn’t know if I was just gonna pop up and say one thing. I had no clue. And then I read the whole thing, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’
“And then at the end, I saw it said I say, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday night,’ which is every entertainer’s dream! You never think you’re gonna get to do that. Hosting is one thing, but to say ‘Live from New York’, I never thought that would be a thing I got to do.”
Ansari would go on to appear on the following two episodes of SNL, again as Patel.
A Secretary of War, a Supreme Court Justice, and an FBI Director walk into a bar pic.twitter.com/yGACw2vf4e
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) May 10, 2026
“The next week I was like, ‘Hey, do we want to do something else? What’s happening?’ And then on Friday, they’re like, ‘Yep, we’re doing it again.’ And I was like, ‘Great.’ And then that week, we did it with Matt Damon. And then by the third week, it was the season finale.”
“And then I was like, ‘Oh yeah, they’ll probably tell me Friday.’ I wasn’t as stressed. Like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll figure it out tomorrow. We’ll write it on Saturday, don’t worry about it.’ I got used to the rhythms of the show.
the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein pays Trump a visit pic.twitter.com/CjxMmIdYpT
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) May 17, 2026
“It was really interesting because it was almost like I got to be a tiny cast member for like three weeks, because I only had to do that one thing, and then I was free the rest of the night. It was really fun. It was a really great random thing that just fell into my lap.”
Watch above or listen to the full episode on Apple Music and Spotify (subscribe and follow!).
