THE SIDEKICK
IF H IS Murtaugh and M is Riggs in the buddy cop analogy, then Pawny is Joe Pesci’s Getz: the sidekick to the main pair who becomes essential to the dynamic. “He doesn’t have the suit,” says Kumail Nanjiani, the 5’ 8’’ comedian who provides the voice and performance for the 0’ 6’’ Pawny. “But he’s definitely part of the team. It’s the three of us, going on this big adventure, trying to solve this mystery.”
The series has always enlisted the help of aliens for investigative help — the extraterrestrial equivalent of a tip-off or well-placed source — but never anything quite like Pawny. He’s the last of a species who came to Earth and based their entire civilisation around a game of chess, hence the name. It’s not just the universe at stake: it’s also Pawny’s chessboard.
Nanjiani (on something of a hot streak at the moment — he’ll next be seen in Marvel’s Eternals movie) remembers having his mind blown by the cosmic game of marbles in the first Men In Black film (“I was like, ‘Oh, this is like everything I love in one movie!’”), and so was thrilled when F. Gary Gray approached him at the Black Panther premiere to say, “There’s something I’m working on right now and I think you might be good for it.” He wasn’t even disappointed when the role turned out to be a six-inch CG alien. “Honestly, it’s less weird than actually seeing myself on screen. It feels so weird to see myself.”
Still, filming an entirely computergenerated character proved to be a pretty weird process. Nanjiani was on set for all of his scenes, with dots on his face, a camera on his head, and occasionally odd positions to act from, in order to match his co-stars’ eyelines. “I’ve never crouched this much in a movie before,” he says. “I had to plank for a couple scenes.”
There are plenty of things even Nanjiani hasn’t seen yet — he may only be inches tall, but we are promised “an action scene between two tiny guys” and some well-placed execution of his microscopic grappling gun. Like Getz, Pawny may prove more essential than we expect.