Making it personal
Hollywood husband-and-wife team find humour in sickness and in health
A medically induced coma is an unlikely incident for a romantic comedy to revolve around, but that’s the conceit of The Big Sick: Boy meets girls, girl breaks up with boy, boy tries to reconnect with comatose girl through her bedside parents.
The story is loosely based on the courtship between Pakistani-born standup comic and Silicon Valley sitcom co-star Kumail Nanjiani and his now-wife, Emily Gordon.
Married for 10 years, the couple decided five years ago to write a script based on the events surrounding Gordon’s Still’s disease illness and the subsequent druginduced coma that assisted in her recovery.
Complicating matters at the time was Nanjiani, who had kept his non-Muslim girlfriend (played in the movie by Zoe Kazan) a secret from his traditional Pakistani Muslim mother (Zenobia Shroff ) and father (Anupam Kher) even as they were trying to engineer an arranged marriage for their son. Ray Romano and Holly Hunter play Gordon’s concerned parents.
The film includes the subplot of Nanjiani’s experiences (he plays a version of himself ) as a comic trying to make it in Chicago’s competitive comedy club landscape. First and foremost, though, are the romance ramifications reimagined with wit and style.
“It was therapeutic and a great writing exercise,” says Gordon. “I would recommend it for anyone revisiting something from the past from other people’s perspectives.”
Initially, they decided to take their time workshopping the screenplay and experimenting with the structure. When power producer Judd Apatow became their champion in 2014, Nanjiani and Gordon became more focused. With director Michael Showalter signed on, they started taking the cinematic possibility more seriously.
“I was very excited,” Nanjiani says. “I worked with an acting coach for a year-and-a-half before we started filming, but while filming it also helped that I got to work with such amazing actors.”
In fact, the hiring of Kazan to play Gordon seemed appropriate for more than a few reasons.
“We do look similar, but it wasn’t just my decision,” Gordon says. “When we all watched Zoe’s audition tape, she was clearly the one who came in with a fully realized woman — it was a unanimous decision.”
They had one more obstacle to overcome — explaining to their parents what was about to unfold.
“Once we got funding, and realized this might actually happen, we talked to each of them about the whole thing so there would be no surprises,” Gordon says.
“We explained to our parents a movie is supposed to be heightened and really schooled them on that.”
Adds Nanjiani: “We literally told them, ‘This is what really happened and this is a little different,’ to make sure they understood, and we eventually had their blessing.”
In Donald Trump’s divided America, movie fans seem to be on board, too.
The movie had a successful debut at last winter’s Sundance Film Festival and it won the audience award at the recent SXSW Film Festival.
The husband-and-wife team say they weren’t trying to make an overt political statement on diversity with The Big Sick.
They were more concerned that some might feel the narrative was insensitive to Still’s disease, which Gordon continues to deal with.