'Greek' Co-Star Aziz Ansari Praises Diddy's 'Comedic Timing'

Sean “Diddy” Combs is amusing, but is he funny ha-ha? His Get Him to the Greek co-star Aziz Ansari tells VIBE whether the mogul-actor’s first comedic turn will have us choking on our Whoppers

It’d be pretty intimidating to come into a comedy with someone like Jonah [Hill] who’s clearly a veteran in the game, but I think Sean—I call him Sean, not Diddy—did a great job of holding his own. I was really impressed. I think the impression of him sometimes is like, “Oh, he’s a Diddy blog. The guy is partying all the time, walking on set drinking Ciroc and lemonade!” But I don’t think you can be concerned with anyone who has a successful vodka, clothing line and acting career. He’s just a hard working dude.

[In the movie,] Jonah Hill plays a character named Aaron who works at a record label and has to get Russell Brand’s character out to the show at the Greek Theatre [in Los Angeles]. We’re all young dudes who work at this record label underneath Diddy and he plays Sergio, who’s our boss. The main scene with him was just us pitching him ideas and him yelling at us and shooting us down. He’s good [playing] the mean boss. My character’s basically an idiot with terrible ideas for the record label, like flush tones. It’s like ringtones but it’s for urinals! So when you’re at the urinal you hear a little bit of a T-Pain song or something. Or ideas like a cell phone that looks exactly like Ludacris.

I could tell from the table read [that Diddy] just seemed like he was really serious. He did a good job, so I would say he does know what comedic timing is. [Laughs.] There’s definitely some improvisation that goes on. We finished the scenes and he was probably on the phone on like 10 Bluetooths dealing with the Diddy empire. —As told to Clover Hope

Catch Aziz Ansari in Get Him to the Greek, in theaters June 4, and on his upcoming summer standup tour.

This article appears in the April/May issue of VIBE.