The hosts of “The View” were a bit stunned on Monday after learning about the criticisms comedian Hasan Minhaj faces for admitting to over-exaggerating stories in his stand-up act. Moderator Whoopi Goldberg was particularly bothered by the blowback, noting that, as a comedian herself, “That’s what we do!”
In an exposé published by The New Yorker on Friday, Minhaj was called out for fabricating and/or embellishing stories in his stand-up act, but the comedian defended his actions, saying, “Every story in my style is built around a seed of truth.”
In a statement to TheWrap, Minhaj noted that “all my standup stories are based on events that happened to me.” And, according to Goldberg on Monday’s episode of “The View,” that’s not uncommon at all.
“That’s what we do!” she said. “That’s what we do. We tell stories, and then we embellish them.”
She went on to recount a story to her cohosts about how she was once called out for not having a degree from NYU, despite her character Fontaine saying she had one.
“It’s like, listen, if you’re gonna hold a comic to the point where you’re gonna check up on their stories, you have to understand, a lot of it is not the exact thing that happened, ’cause why would we tell exactly what happened?” she said. “It ain’t that interesting!”
For their part, Goldberg’s cohosts largely agreed with her and argued that no one should really expect complete honesty in a comedy show.
“I don’t go see comedy shows, and I don’t see Netflix specials in comedy for documentary information,” host Ana Navarro said. “This is not encyclopedias, this is to be entertained.”
Host Alyssa Farah Griffin added that she “honestly assumed that most of them were making it up” to begin with.
