From 'Evil' to 'Terror': Aasif Mandvi talks horror as social commentary

NEW YORK, June 11 (UPI) --The Daily Show, Evil and Miniature Wife alum Aasif Mandvi says Dr. Anand, the administrator he plays in the supernatural drama The Terror: Devil in Silver, began his career with the best of intentions.

Wrapping up on AMC+ and Shudder Thursday, Season 3 of the horror anthology series follows the staff and patients at a New York psychiatric hospital where a malevolent, immortal force makes it impossible to treat mental illness and heal emotional scars.

"If you went to a prequel of this, you would see that Dr. Anand sort of started as a guy who wanted to do good and help these people and then, ultimately, realized that he was caught inside an institution and he was caught inside the mechanics of that," Mandvi, 60, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"In order to help these people at all, he had to compromise so many ethical standards," the actor said.

"The alternative was that the entire place would get shut down and these people would be put out on the street. And, so, he finds himself in a really difficult and tragic situation where he is constantly, I imagine, taking a lot of medications for his ulcer because I think he recognizes that he is caught inside. He's as much of an inmate as the inmates are."

Mandvi said playing tech-savvy demon hunter Ben on Evil for four seasons helped prepare him for this project.

"I spent a lot of time on a show called Evil, where we sort of fused horror with a kind of social messaging and sort of social commentary," he recalled.

"I liked that about what this show was doing in a less obvious way [than Evil did]. It starts to sort of emerge as you watch the show."

Most of the series was filmed in a real abandoned New York prison, giving the cast, crew and audience a sense of claustrophobic dread.

"A lot of that is done with the lighting and the sound," Mandvi said. "I love the darkness of it and how those hallways are shot."

Spoilers ahead.

Terror: Devil in Silver opens with angry, failed rocker Pepper (Dan Stevens) getting dropped off for a psych evaluation at the hospital after he assaulted a man harassing his girlfriend.

Anand tells Pepper that if he is compliant, he will be released shortly, but Pepper's rebellious nature leads to a much longer stay.

"Pepper is very outspoken and clearly is resistant to the system. When you first meet Dr. Anand, he's frustrated that these cops seem to just drop off these people because they don't want to do the paperwork," Mandvi said.

"[Anand] is married to the system operating efficiently and without a lot of upheaval or turmoil and Pepper brings that turmoil. He brings the questioning and the non-compliance."

During Pepper's confinement, he gets to know the other patients, some of whom have lived at the asylum for decades.

"It becomes a place that is really just treading water. It's not about healing. It's about just surviving and just existing and I think Dr. Anand is definitely part of that and he's convinced himself that the survival of this institution, this hospital, is more important than it not existing," Mandvi said.

Pepper doesn't just constantly try to escape. He fires up the other patients so they want to escape, too.

"Anand really just needs the place to run efficiently and without any kind of chaos and there's the pressure from outside because he's like middle management, right? He's sort of in that really unfortunate and miserable state of middle management," Mandvi said.

After several people die at the facility, it is ordered to be shuttered.

Anand doesn't have much time to consider what life might be like on the outside because patient Dorry (Judith Light), lobotomized several times and possessed by the entity, kills him.

"When it gets shut down, he decides that he almost is freed because that burden has been lifted off of his shoulders from the outside," Mandvi said.

"But I think he's always in that state of trying to keep this institution, this flawed institution, operating, even though he knows these patients are not being helped. They're just simply existing, as opposed to not existing."

The series co-stars CCH Pounder, John Benjamin Hickey, Stephen Root, Michael Aronov, Marin Ireland and Chinaza Uche.

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This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 11:48 AM.