Aziz Ansari Has Had a Flip Phone for Almost 10 Years (Exclusive)

Aziz Ansari is a Luddite and proud of it. 

In his new film Good Fortune, Keanu Reeves plays a low-level angel who helps prevent humans from texting and driving. But it’s not an affliction suffered by Ansari, who wrote, directed, and stars in the comedy.

He still doesn’t have a smartphone. And when it comes to technology fasts, “I’m starving myself,” Ansari says at the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, Sept. 7, a day after the premiere of Good Fortune (in theaters Oct. 17).

“I have a flip phone,” the writer-director-star, 42, says. “I block pretty much every website from my computer. I don’t have an email address… I have a landline. I love the landline!”

How long has he resisted going back to a smartphone? Ansari pauses to think. “I don’t know. I stopped using email during season one of Master of None, so that’s like almost 10 years,” he says. 

“But look, I’m not ignorant of my privileges with my life,” he adds. “I have an assistant and all these things that help take care of things and manage things.”

An email-free life isn’t “practical for everybody,” says the Emmy winner. “But for me, it helps me keep a clear head to help me write and do what’s more important for my job.”

Lionsgate’s Good Fortune stars Ansari, Reeves, Seth Rogen, Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer, and follows a “well-meaning but rather inept angel named Gabriel” who “meddles in the lives of a struggling gig worker (Ansari) and a wealthy venture capitalist (Rogen),” per an official synopsis. 

“He just was so funny,” recalls Ansari of working with Reeves. “We started filming and it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s really on fire here. We got to get some more Gabriel bits in here.’ It’s a comedy writer’s dream.”

As for social media, Parks & Recreation alum admits that assistants are in charge and that his Instagram account is “not me.” He quips, “Hopefully there’s nothing super offensive being posted on there. I hope it’s all good.”

Digital footprint upkeep, he says, is “not what I’m good at. What I’m good at is sitting there writing a script or something. That’s where I want to put my energy. Or to watching movies or reading. That’s the better use of my head space for me.”

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Following its Sept. 6 Toronto premiere, Good Fortune is in theaters Oct. 17.