KUMAIL NANJIANI
IS SECURING ETERNAL FAME…
Last December, fans of stand-up comedian, actor, writer, producer and podcast host Kumail Nanjiani got a shock when he posted pics on Instagram, for in place of the nerdy coder Nanjiani played in HBO sitcom Silicon Valley was a hunk built from pecs, pizzazz and pheromones. “I was scrolling through Twitter, and it was just my torso, after my torso, after my torso,” he says. “I was just like, ‘Oh my god! What have I done?’”
The extreme makeover was the result of a year’s intensive training to play godlike superhero Kingo in Chloé Zhao’s Marvel-ous adventure Eternals, about an immortal alien race that has secretly lived on Earth for more than 7,000 years. Nanjiani would enjoy “baked goods” on his cheat days but otherwise gobbled down protein and pushed himself beyond the pain barrier with the help/barked orders of a personal trainer. “The idea that I get to play a superhero in a Marvel movie is a dream I wouldn’t have even dared to entertain a few years ago,” he says. “It felt impossible.”
The 42-year-old is, in fact, on an impossibly hot streak. As well as Eternals crashing into cinemas later this year, he has action crime-comedy The Lovebirds arriving in April, with Nanjiani and Issa Rae playing a couple whose relationship is thoroughly investigated when they find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery. And now streaming on Apple TV+ is comedy series Little America, the project that Nanjiani and his creative partner and wife Emily V. Gordon chose from the endless offers they received after co-writing 2017 dramedy The Big Sick. Little America examines the lives of immigrants in the US. It resonates with Nanjiani, who left Pakistan to attend college in Iowa.
“We didn’t want the show to be political, but it is undeniable that its very existence is seen as a political act,” he says. “We really wanted to make a show that was entertaining, moving, funny – all the things that we like and stuff we watched. We didn’t want it to feel like a medicine show, you know?”
Well, his entertainments are certainly making the world a better place. JG
ETA | 24 APRIL / THE LOVEBIRDS OPENS NEXT MONTH. ETERNALS OPENS IN NOVEMBER.