TRAIN LIKE A SUPERHERO
Comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani explains why building a superhero body is no laughing matter
Kumail Nanjiani isn’t your conventional hero. But his transformation to join the Marvel Universe will help you get eternally ripped
He may have been surprised to find himself thrust into the Marvel Universe, but Kumail Nanjiani wasn’t planning on letting it show. “I thought, ‘I’m playing the first south-Asian superhero in a Marvel movie,’” he says. “I don’t want to be the schlubby brown guy. I want to look like someone who can hang with Thor and Captain America.”
Best known for his role as tech nerd Dinesh in US sitcom Silicon Valley, he admits the prospect of regular trips to the gym made him feel one thing: dread. Into his fifth decade, he had never trained with such intensity. His trainer even attempted to stimulate his muscles with electric shocks.
The early workouts for The Eternals were so brutal that he often came close to vomiting. The mere thought of training
“really fucked” with him, and Nanjiani’s wife says he struggled to focus when he was at home. “For an hour, you couldn’t count on him to have a conversation,” she says. But the morning he meets MH for this shoot, which was inspired by iconic Hollywood action heroes, he was back at the gym, getting in some shoulder and chest workouts just for fun. “Five minutes into my workout, my mood brightened,” he says. “I love it.”
In deciding how his character Kingo should look, Nanjiani looked to Bollywood stars such as Hrithik Roshan for inspiration. “I went to my trainer and said, ‘I want to look like this guy.’” To achieve it, he leaned heavily on Marvel. He met with a studio chef and soon Nanjiani was being delivered five meals a day, including breakfasts of eggs and steak – or, for variety, eggs and chicken. “They were like, ‘If you’re going to have a can of Coke today, let us know in the morning so we can account for it,’” he says. He was encouraged to eat what he wanted on weekends, but cut out sugar and gluten to such an extent that a portion of sticky toffee pudding resulted in “12 hours of physical pain”.
The results broke the internet (286,000 likes and counting on Instagram) but it took time for him to adjust. “I did have body dysmorphia.
I would just see the flaws,” he says. The reaction helped. “When I saw the likes, I was like, ‘OK, I don’t see what’s actually there’. It’s something I’m trying to control, because that’s not a good way to be. You want to be easy on yourself.”
While he now enjoys his workouts, Nanjiani would still rather spend his time playing video games or rewatching old Harrison Ford movies. “I want more out of my life, so I go to the gym to get more energy,” he says. And with the weight of the Marvel Universe to carry, he’s going to need plenty of it.