'30 Rock' Star Maulik Pancholy Dotes on Alec Baldwin, Shatters Stereotypes

By Maggie Coughlan Posted Nov 12th 2010 10:25AM

At first glance, you might not recognize Maulik Pancholy's name, but you certainly know his face. With breakout roles opposite showbiz heavyweights like Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey and Mary-Louise Parker, Pancholy is making his mark all over Hollywood.

Pancholy plays Jonathan, Jack Donaghy's (Alec Baldwin) overzealous and infatuated assistant, on NBC's Emmy-winning '30 Rock.' Prior to his gig on '30 Rock,' Pancholy starred as Sanjay, a gay drug dealer who has a baby with a prostitute, opposite Mary-Louise Parker on 'Weeds.'

Speaking to Divanee.com about his relationship with Baldwin, Pancholy said, "I also learn so much from him. He has an uncanny ability to cut right to the heart of a scene, or even a moment. And he knows instinctively how to make something funny ... or something that's already funny even funnier."

Pancholy, who is of South Asian descent, also spoke about the pressure to dispel racial stereotypes through the roles he takes. "I think there's still negative stereotypes out there, but at least we're seeing some balance on TV now with characters like Mindy Kaling's Kelly Kapoor ['The Office'] or Danny Pudi's Abed ['Community']," Pancholy said.

"A big thing of concern now is how so many of the brown characters on TV are terrorists. And yeah -- we can't ignore that terrorism happens and, of course, there should be television and film made about it," he said. "But what happens when it's not balanced out so that we get to see that brown people are not ONLY terrorists?"

Read the rest of the interview at Divanee.com.