A woman has recounted a date with Master of None star Aziz Ansari, claiming it was ‘a violating night and a painful one’.
The woman, a 23-year-old photographer who lives in Brooklyn, spoke to Babe on condition of anonymity, claiming Ansari ignored her ‘non-verbal cues’ in his apartment in September.
The woman claimed that, although the two did not have sex and Ansari called a car for her when she asked to leave, the self-proclaimed ‘feminist’ actor was pushy and sexually aggressive on their first date.
Representatives for Ansari did not immediately return requests for comment late Saturday.
The woman said she met Ansari at an after-party for the Emmys in Los Angeles on September 17, when she noticed they had both brought the same kind of film cameras.
Aziz Ansari (second from right) is seen with Master of None co-creator Alan Yang (left) and co-stars Eric Wareheim and Alessandra Mastronardi after the Emmys. A woman has come forward claiming she met Ansari that night and later had a date that turned uncomfortable
‘I stood up, and I’m like tipsy at this point and feeling really confident. I’m in a gown, and I walked up to Aziz and said, ‘What’d you just shoot with?’,’ she recalled.
She said she exchanged phone numbers with Ansari at the party and later made plans for a date when they had both returned to New York.
On Monday, September 25, she said she went to Ansari’s swanky TriBeCa apartment, where they drank white wine and talked.
‘I didn’t get to choose and I prefer red, but it was white wine,’ she recalled.
Ansari then walked her a few blocks away to Grand Banks, an oyster bar on a historic wooden schooner on the Hudson River. The dinner proceeded and Ansari seemed in a rush to get her elsewhere, she claims.
‘When the waiter came over he quickly asked for the check and he said like, “Let’s get off this boat”,’ before her wine glass was even empty, she said. ‘Like, he got the check and then it was bada-boom, bada-bing, we’re out of there.’
When the pair returned to his apartment on trendy Franklin Street, she says the kissed, but she declined sex when Ansari offered to get a condom.
He performed oral sex on her and then asked her to reciprocate, which she did, she claims. But she said his aggressive moves unsettled her.
‘The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.’
The woman called that alleged move ‘the claw’.
‘It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a f**king game.’
‘Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling. I know that my hand stopped moving at some points,’ she said, adding that ‘he probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times. ‘I stopped moving my lips and turned cold.’
She couldn’t say whether Ansari was just clueless or actively ignoring her signals.
‘I know I was physically giving off cues that I wasn’t interested. I don’t think that was noticed at all, or if it was, it was ignored.’
Undeterred, Ansari repeatedly asked her ‘Where do you want me to f**k you?’ she claims.
‘I wasn’t really even thinking of that, I didn’t want to be engaged in that with him. But he kept asking, so I said, ‘Next time.’
And he goes, ‘Oh, you mean second date?’ and I go, ‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ and he goes, ‘Well, if I poured you another glass of wine now, would it count as our second date?’
He then poured her a glass and handed it to her, but she excused herself to the bathroom soon after.
‘I said I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you,’
‘He said, “Oh, of course, it’s only fun if we’re both having fun”,’ she said. ‘Then he said, “Let’s just chill over here on the couch”.’
‘He sat back and pointed to his penis and motioned for me to go down on him. And I did. I think I just felt really pressured. It was literally the most unexpected thing I thought would happen at that moment because I told him I was uncomfortable,’ she said.
She claims he then took her in front of a large mirror and pressed his genitals against her anus, saying ‘Do you want me to f**k you right here?’
‘After he bent me over is when I stood up and said no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this,’ she claimed. ‘And he said, ‘How about we just chill, but this time with our clothes on?’
The unnamed woman accused Ansari of using a move she called ‘the claw’. He is seen wearing a Time’s Up pin at a Golden Globes after party last weekend
The pair returned to the couch and watched an episode of Seinfeld, she said, when he allegedly began performing the Claw maneuver again.
‘I remember saying, ‘You guys are all the same, you guys are all the f**king same.’ Ansari asked her what she meant. When she turned to answer, she says he met her with ‘gross, forceful kisses.’
The woman then stood up to leave and Ansari relented and insisted on calling a car for her, she claims. He instructed her to use the name ‘Essence’ with the driver.
‘I cried the whole ride home. At that point I felt violated. That last hour was so out of my hand.’
On the way home, the woman texted a friend: ‘I hate men.’ (A reporter for Babe reviewed the text messages and spoke with the friends.)
The text message continued: ‘I had to say no a lot. He wanted sex. He wanted to get me drunk and then fuck me.’
She texted another friend after she got back to her apartment: ‘I’m taking a bath I’m really upset I feel weird.’
The woman said that Ansari’s reputation as a feminist and ‘woke’ individual on social issues heightened the sense of disconnect she felt on the date.
‘This was not what I expected. I’d seen some of his shows and read excerpts from his book and I was not expecting a bad night at all, much less a violating night and a painful one,’ she said.
The next day, before the woman could figure out what if anything to say to Ansari about the date, he sent her a text message.
‘It was fun meeting you last night,’ the message read.
‘Last night might’ve been fun for you, but it wasn’t for me,’ Grace responded. ‘You ignored clear non-verbal clues; you kept going with advances.’ She explains why she is telling him how she felt: ‘I want to make sure you’re aware so maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home.’
‘I’m so sad to hear this,’ he responded. ‘Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.’