Whoopi Goldberg has defended Hasan Minhaj after the comedian received criticism for acknowledging he has embellished some of his stand-up stories.

During Monday’s episode of The View, Goldberg, 67, explained that’s how the craft of stand-up comedy works.

“That’s what we do,” the Sister Act star and fellow comedian told the panel. “We tell stories and we embellish them. If you’re going to hold a comic to the point where you’re going to check up on stories, you have to understand, a lot of it is not the exact thing that happened because why would we tell exactly what happened? It’s not that interesting.”

She added, “There’s information that we will give you as comics that will have grains of truth, but don’t take it to the bank. That’s our job, a seed of truth: sometimes truth and sometimes total B.S.”

In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Minhaj acknowledged that he had embellished stories in his comedy routine.

While admitting some of the stories were fictionalised, the 37-year-old comedian said they were based on “emotional truth”, adding, “The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise.”

“That’s inherent to the art form,” Minhaj explained in a later statement. “You wouldn’t go to a Haunted House and say, ‘Why are these people lying to me?’ – The point is the ride. Stand-up is the same.”

– Cover Media