Director and actor Aziz Ansari poses for a portrait during the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

TORONTO — By the time Keanu Reeves suffered an injury on the set of “Good Fortune,” Aziz Ansari had faced enough setbacks to make his film’s title sound ironic.

Ansari’s first stab at directing a feature, “Being Mortal,” was shut down in 2022 after its star Bill Murray was accused of misconduct on set. Then his next attempt, “Good Fortune,” was put on hold during the Hollywood strikes.

And just as production finally picked up again, Reeves took a tumble in the least cinematic way possible.

“He had some bad fortune on set. He broke his kneecap. He fell down going back to his dressing room,” Ansari says during an interview when the film premiered at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

“We had the same stunt people that worked with him on 'John Wick' and some other stuff. And I was like, ‘He got hurt on those, right? He'll be fine.’ They were like, ‘No, he never got hurt.’ Not until my movie. That's when he gets hurt.”

Reeves, who plays a guardian angel in the body-swap comedy, powered through and completed most of his scenes while injured, saving the more physical sequences for after he healed.

“He was always just like, ‘I'm fine, let's go.’ Obviously, something was wrong…but he just wanted to shoot. The guy wants to shoot. He loves making movies,” says Ansari.

It’s been a long and rocky road to "Good Fortune," which some are calling Ansari’s Hollywood comeback after a stretch out of the spotlight — his last onscreen appearance was a scaled-back role in the final season of his Netflix show "Master of None" in 2021.

He laughs at that suggestion, pinning his absence to the film's multiple hurdles.

“This is a big movie and it’s taken me a while,” he says.

“Every movie is a miracle.”

In the film, out Friday, Reeves' bumbling angel swaps the lives of a struggling food delivery driver, played by Ansari, and a spoiled tech billionaire, played by Seth Rogen. The heavenly plan is meant to prove the grass isn’t greener on the other side — until it turns out that it is. A comedy of errors ensues, doubling as a satire of the gig economy.

It’s Ansari’s highest-profile project since a sexual misconduct allegation in 2018, when an anonymous accuser wrote in a blog post that she felt “pressured” into sex during a date with the comedian. Ansari responded with a statement, saying he believed the encounter was “completely consensual” and that he was “surprised and concerned” when the woman later told him she felt otherwise. He addressed the incident again in his 2019 standup special, “Aziz Ansari: Right Now.”

Asked what he had learned from the experience, Ansari sidestepped: “Look, I mean, I’m just so happy to be here with the movie. I had a great experience with everybody, and yeah, it’s just such an honour to be at the festival. It took a long time to get here and make the movie, and I’m excited to be here.”

Back in 2022, Ansari was caught in the orbit of another controversy during the production of “Being Mortal,” when Murray was found by Searchlight Pictures to have engaged in “inappropriate behaviour” with a female assistant.

Again, Ansari avoided comment on the allegation against Murray but spoke highly of the film’s source material, a non-fiction book by Atul Gawande on the challenges of aging, illness and end-of-life care. The dramedy was shelved three weeks into production.

“It's such an interesting topic and maybe one day I can revisit it,” he says.

“I mean, I’ve got to get through this. Let's see if people go to (‘Good Fortune’) and then hopefully it'll be easier to revisit that and make the other things I've got cooking.”

With “Good Fortune,” Ansari was looking to keep things light.

“I'd been doing some stuff that was a little heavier and I wanted to do a comedy. I thought about these movies that were around in the ’30s and ’40s that would deal with class and wealth inequality, things like ‘Sullivan's Travels’ or ‘My Man Godfrey’ or ‘It's a Wonderful Life,’” he says.

“I was like, ‘What if you did a movie like that, but you updated it for today?’”

To help realize his vision, Ansari assembled a Canadian dream team of Reeves, Rogen and Sandra Oh, who plays an angel boss. At the time, he wasn’t aware of their shared heritage.

“I didn't know Sandra was Canadian,” he says.

“So yeah, I've got the Canadian trifecta between Sandra, Keanu and Seth Rogen. They're very nice people.”

If all goes well, Ansari says he’ll tap the musical equivalent of the trio for his next film.

“Do you know Drake’s Canadian?” he quips.

“The next movie it’s Drake, The Weeknd and PartyNextDoor.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2025.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2025