Hasan Minhaj Claims The ‘New Yorker’ Profile That Cost Him ‘Daily Show’ Hosting Gig Was “Needlessly Misleading”: “I’m Not A Psycho”

Hasan Minhaj is addressing the backlash he’s received from the New Yorker piece — released a little more than a month ago — that shed light on some of his comedy routines being embellished.

In a YouTube video the comedian shared Thursday (Oct. 26), Minhaj acknowledged that sharing his response to The New Yorker piece amid the conflict in the Middle East “feels so trivial,” but noted that “being accused of faking racism is not trivial” and “demands an explanation.”

“To anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by my stand-up, I am sorry,” he apologizes. “I made artistic choices to express myself and drive home larger issues affecting me and my community and I feel horrible that I let people down,” adding that “the reason [he] feel[s] horrible is because [he’s] not a psycho.”

“But this New Yorker article definitely makes me look like one,” he continues. “It was so needlessly misleading. Not just about my stand-up, but also me as a person.”

He notes that “racism, FBI surveillance, and threats to [his] family happened,” which he says he told The New Yorker reporter Clare Malone “on the record.”

“So I’m gonna do the most Hasan Minhaj thing ever: I’m gonna do a deep dive on my own scandal with graphics because there was so much evidence I gave the New Yorker that they ignored that I want to show you,” he says.

He addresses three stories of his that were called out in the profile, one of which was asking a white girl (who is given the pseudonym Bethany Reed to “protect her anonymity”) to prom, but being told by her mother on her doorstep the day of that they “don’t want their family back home to see her [in pictures] with a brown boy.”

“Bethany’s mom did really say that — it was just a few days before prom,” he shares, explaining that he “created the doorstep scene to drop the audience into the feeling of that moment, which [he] told the reporter.”

He includes audio recordings from the interview with Malone to corroborate his claims, as well as email exchanges between him and the real-life Bethany that suggest the two are on good terms and that her parents did turn him away.

“But here’s the bigger question,” Minhaj poses in his new video. “Why did The New Yorker fact-check my stand-up special, but not properly fact-check their own article?”

Another story he discusses is of undercover FBI informant “Brother Eric” entrapping him at a gym and being “slammed against the hood of a cop car” after making fun of him. Although Minhaj says he “did have altercations with undercover law enforcement growing up, and that experience formed the basis of this story,” he admits that “it didn’t go down exactly like this,” and “understand[s] why people are upset.”

The last story he covers is receiving an envelope filled with white powder at his home, which he believed to be anthrax. In the routine featured in The King’s Jester, he said some of the powder fell on his daughter, causing them to take her to the hospital just in case.

Minhaj sincerely apologizes once again, saying he’s “sorry for embellishing the story, or if anyone was worrying about [him] and [his] family,” and clarifies that his daughter was “just a few feet away” from him when he opened the envelope in real life.

A spokesperson from The New Yorker released the following statement to The Hollywood Reporter in response to Minhaj’s reaction video:

“Hasan Minhaj confirms in this video that he selectively presents information and embellishes to make a point: exactly what we reported. Our piece, which includes Minhaj’s perspective at length, was carefully reported and fact-checked. It is based on interviews with more than 20 people, including former Patriot Act and Daily Show staffers; members of Minhaj’s security team; and people who have been the subject of his standup work, including the former FBI informant ‘Brother Eric’ and the woman at the center of his prom-rejection story. We stand by our story.”

Since the profile was published, Minhaj lost what he had believed to be a “closed deal” to succeed Trevor Noah as host of The Daily Show

In a statement issued to Variety in September following the release of the New Yorker profile, Minhaj said the following:

“All my standup stories are based on events that happened to me … I use the tools of standup comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form. You wouldn’t go to a Haunted House and say ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ — The point is the ride. Standup is the same.”

“I understand why people were upset by all of this,” he admits in the new video. “Different comedians have different expectations built into their personas. I thought I had two different expectations built into my work: my work as a storytelling comedian, and my work as a political comedian where facts always come first”

He highlights that he “assumed that the lines between truth and fiction were allowed to be a bit more blurry” in his work as a storytelling comedian, and understands why a journalist “would be interested where that line sits.”

“I just wish the reporter had been more interested in their own premise,” he adds. “Someone genuinely curious about truth in stand-up wouldn’t just fact check my specials. They would fact check a bunch of specials. They would establish a control group, a baseline, to see how far outside the bounds I was in relation to others. They wouldn’t just cherry pick a few stories.”

He ends the video with a dash of his comedic charm, arguing that “the guy in this article is a proper fucking psycho,” but hopes that viewers “feel like the real [him] is not.”

“I’m just a guy with IBS and low sperm motility,” he quips. “Again, there is much more important news happening in the world right now that needs your attention. So I appreciate you watching, I take the note and I hope to see you at the next show.”

Watch Minhaj’s video above.