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Kumail Nanjiani knows what it’s like to have people focused on your body. And he can tell you from personal experience that that kind of attention isn’t all it’s meant to be.
“I have discovered over the last year and a half since I took this photo that I am very uncomfortable talking about my body – and it has become less and less comfortable,” he told GQ in a new interview.
“That image” was what sparked all the buzz. In fact, they were two Instagram photos posted in 2019, shortly after his transformation as a comedian (from movies like “The Big Sick” and shows like “Silicon Valley”) at totally torn actor. He had gotten fired for the upcoming Marvel superhero movie “Eternals” and had something to definitely show off.
The thing is, it went viral. And as Nanjiani, 43, told GQ, he’s got a little bit more to have to discuss it all the time.
His wife, Emily V. Gordon, is nearby. “It’s almost like being a young woman and seeing your breasts develop,” she told the magazine. “You realize at some point that you are seen differently by everyone. “
In the film, he plays Kingo, an almost immortal superhero who works like a Bollywood star in the real world. He spent so much time in the gym training with a trainer that he would throw up sometimes. Dwayne Johnson commented on his post: “Extremely hard work. Dense muscle is hard to achieve.”
“Eternals” director Chloe Zhao said she was surprised how much better it had been, Nanjiani said. “Chloe got a little mad at me for being in good shape.… I shouldn’t say ‘get in good shape’. For changing my body to look a certain way.” (Zhao told GQ, “I wanted to make sure he didn’t feel like he had to do this for me.”)
He wanted to look like he was playing “the first South Asian superhero.” He added, “I want to look like someone who can take on Thor or Captain America, or any of those people.” Plus, as a Bollywood fan, he knows these actors are often muscular.
“I was like, ‘I want this to be believable,'” he said. “I want to feel that powerful in this role.”
At the same time, he is afraid of perpetuating a toxic image of masculinity. “It’s aggression,” he said. “It’s anger. Often, we are taught to be useful by using physical strength or our brains in aggressive and competitive ways. Not in an empathetic way. Not in an open and collaborative way. It’s the same when you have all these guys like asking people to debate it on Twitter. It’s the same as arm wrestling. It is about overcoming. And that’s what the male ideal was. Domineering. Defeat. Crushing. Murder. Destroy. This is what it is to be trapped.
At the end of the interview, he revealed that he wished he could tell his young man not to be so hard on himself, that one day he would play Kingo. “If I could talk to myself I would be like…” You are enough. “That’s what I would say.”
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