New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference, in the Queens borough of New York, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

Long before he became an unlikely political force, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was just another 20-something trying to squeeze a laugh out of his Saturday improv class in Manhattan.

“I went to Magnet Theater for Improv Level One,” Mamdani said of that winter in 2017, when his eight-week course at the Chelsea theater ended in a student showcase. “I think I had dreams of going to the Upright Citizens Brigade.”

When he is sworn in Jan. 1 as the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor and, at 34, one of its youngest, Mamdani will also be the rare city leader whose cultural upbringing was both cosmopolitan, as the son of Oscar

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