Aziz Ansari: Parents episode of Master of None made friends cry

Released on Netflix earlier this month, Aziz Ansari’s Master of None almost instantly became one of the year’s most talked-about and well-reviewed shows. Created by Ansari and his former Parks and Recreation colleague Alan Yang, the 10-episode comedy touches on everything from relationships in the modern age, to television’s striking lack of diversity, to making pasta. But it’s the episode about how millennials relate to their parents, fittingly titled “Parents,” that seemed to strike the biggest chord with viewers.

“Yeah, it’s one of those things where we thought it was a special episode when we were making it, but we didn’t know it would have the response that it did,” Ansari told EW on the red carpet of VH1 Big in 2015 With Entertainment Weekly on Sunday night. “It’s so nice to see all these people writing nice things about it and saying they relate to it. I have so many friends texting me that they were crying and now they’re calling their parents. It’s really cool. That episode was really personal to me and Alan Yang, and we’re glad it turned out well.”

Ansari cast his real parents to play his onscreen parents in Master of None, and recently wrote a short essay about how the experience with them on the episode changed his life.

“What’s strange is doing that episode and working with my parents has increased the quality of my relationship to my parents IN MY REAL LIFE,” he wrote. “In reality, I haven’t always had the best, most open relationship with my parents because we are weirdly closed off emotionally sometimes. But we are getting better. And if you have something like that with your family – I urge you to work at it and get better because these are special people in your life and I get terrified when my dad tells me about friends of his, people close to his age, that are having serious health issues, etc. Enjoy and love these people while you can.”

Watch Ansari discuss his big 2015 above, and check out VH1 Big in 2015 With Entertainment Weekly when it airs on Dec. 7 at 9/8c on VH1.