Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Kumail Nanjiani

You're listening to DraftKings Network. Welcome to South Beach Sessions back on the West Coast I'm very excited about this one because Kamal Nanjiani is a man of much range. It's not just that he's an actor, he's a writer. I think his first love is stand-up comedy. He's returning to stand-up. Night Thought is the special Hulu, December 19th. He's in theaters now with Ella McKay. I wonder which of these... You've shown extraordinary range, and your journey is fascinating, so thanks for being with us. But which of these gives you the greatest joy? Because you're going back to comedy now, and you didn't You have to do that.

No. Which brings me the greatest joy. It changes day to day. What I love about stand-up is it's really on you, your mistakes. It's you and the crowd. If something doesn't go right, it's completely your fault. When you're acting and stuff, truly when you're acting and stuff, you're at the mercy of other people. So you really have to trust the filmmaker that they make you look good. The actual doing of it, I enjoy acting the most, I would say, because I it to be challenging. It's exciting because the goals are so varied. Whereas with stand-up, your goal really is to make people laugh. It's not limited. There's so much you could do with stand-up. But with acting, you could be very cathartic. It can feel like therapy. Stand-up, you can do really well and just have it be outward-facing. With acting, you can't do that. You have to be inside your own self.

But therapy, how? Because you say inside your own self, but it's also the one that is most not you, right? I don't think the Welcome to Chippendale's character that you played is very you.

But parts of them are me. The part of me that's like, If I could kill this guy and get away with it, wouldn't that be great? I certainly have a list of people that I'm like, If that person could die and it doesn't come back to me, I would not even consider not doing it. I would do it right now. With acting, you're playing different characters, but at least the way I do it, I wasn't trained or anything in acting. I've been taking acting classes now for about 12 years, but I didn't go to school for it. I have to use parts of myself. I have to put parts of myself into the character, and I have to take parts of the character and put them into myself. It is very personal. No matter how different the character is the surface, you really are using a lot of your own insights for it.

I want to get to a bunch of this stuff because you're very vulnerable, you're sensitive. Let's dive into the deep end. Which are you more Sensitive or anxious?

Sensitive. I'm more sensitive. I think so. Although with anxiety for so long, it was just what I thought being a person was. That is just sometimes it It becomes background noise. You don't even know. For me, the biggest... I've had journeys with both those things about myself, and I'm at different points with them. With anxiety, it took me a long time to even realize I was anxious. It was with my wife's family. We've been together for years. At one point, I was like, I'm a very laidback person. She's like, What are you talking about? You're the most anxious person I've ever met. I realized, Oh, all this thinking and overthinking and what am I going to do next or what did I do? Was that okay? I shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have done that. The regret of doing something, hurting myself for something I did that's already in the past, basically not being able to live in the moment. I realized that's just how I've been my entire life.

And numb, right? Because I recognize this one. Like numb to it. Because I always argued that I'm here, and I didn't realize that I went lower than that because of whatever the suppression of feelings were, or eating my feelings, or not understanding understanding what my feelings were, speaking them more than feeling them?

100%. I wasn't even speaking my feelings. It would push, push, push, come out as anger. So I've had, I would say until fairly recently, since I was a kid, I've had anger issues. Since I was a kid, I remember being 10 and being so angry that I didn't know what to deal with it. The anger felt bigger than the world. That's a thing that My parents have known about me my entire life because everybody else thought I was a very nice kid. I was very good. I got good grades. I never got in trouble. I really was a golden child, and I really was. I still am to the family. I was like the prince of the family. But what they got to see that nobody else got to see was this explosive anger that would happen every now and then. All that came from suppressing feelings, but also not in in some ways, not liking myself. I didn't realize that I didn't like myself until just a few years ago. When I understood that, I was like, Oh, a lot of these behaviors are now making sense. That was what the anxiety and sensitivity is tied to that, too.

I knew I was always sensitive, but then not liking that about myself, the fact that my feelings that I get hurt very easily, that I get sad very easily. Realizing that that's not how men are supposed to be and trying to push that down led to a lot of anger, led to a lot of self-hatred, too, because I didn't like that I was I'm really sensitive. When you're in high school and stuff, you're supposed to be like, badass, and you have this armor and nothing gets to you. Everything got to me. It wasn't until, I would say, to my 40s where I was like, Oh, I'm really, really sensitive, and it's okay to just... That's just my cross to bear. My feelings get hurt. Nothing's going to fix that. I have to accept it.

Why till '40, though? Because I buried myself in my work so much that I didn't realize any of that until I got to my '40s, too. There are a lot of parallels here for me.

At a certain point, it just became... Part of it was the pandemic, just having to really sit with myself, just me and Emily. We took it very seriously because my wife's in a high-risk group. For a year and a half, we did not leave the Just having to spend all that time. We would separate for the day. We'd wake up, we'd have breakfast together. We'd spend all day separately. I would work, she would work, we'd write, I'd work out, and we then would come together for dinner and watch a movie at night. So spending all that time with myself, I became very aware of how things make me feel, what my reaction to things is. I also actually do think acting did help with that, realizing, Oh, I have all this stuff I can tap into, which means that stuff is in there and I've been denying it.

How did you identify, though, as laid back when you're angry? How does that self-assessment become so wrong? Are you in denial there?

Because I wasn't angry all the time. I would get angry every now and then. It was 100% denial. It was certainly denial. Because on the surface, in my 20s, I was smoking a lot of pot. I was doing stand-up. I was late to my work all the time. I was like, these are all, to me, the signifiers of someone who's very chill and laid back.

It's just someone who smokes weed.

Yeah. Well, it's like that. To me, the analogy is when a fan is moving really fast, it looks like it's not moving at all. That's how I felt, where on the surface, I was just chill, but inside was a tempest. It was just all these conflicting cyclones of feelings seemingly canceling each other out, but they really weren't. Everything was spiking all at once. I knew I had an anger issue, and I hated myself for that, too. I hated that I had this anger thing. I'd get very angry. My pattern had become, with people I love, getting really angry and then saying the thing you can't take back, and then that would break it, and then suddenly awful guilt about what I had said.

What a wonderful cycle that is right It was, Oh, my God. You finally get rid of the feeling and then just feel great remorse for having felt it, have it said it, and it just becomes a cyclone of self-punishment where you never forgive yourself.

I mean, self-punishment has been a big part of just how I deal with myself forever. It took me a long time to realize that. I think it was just realizing when I got to my 40s, I've been with my wife family now. We've been married for 17 years, realizing this is the person I love most in the world. I'm making her life difficult because of this, and I owe it more to her to be better about this stuff. We started doing this thing where We had to tell each other three vulnerable things every day when we did that for months. It could be big, small, whatever. That's what made me realize, Oh, all the things that I thought I hated about myself just makes her love me more.

What great wisdom to have, though, to understand that you had to be vulnerable, that you have to do that in order for the relationship to expand, for her to see you completely.

Yeah, that's the goal. I realized people still talk about, I don't tell my wife everything. I'm like, I really, really do. Now, it wasn't always like this. Genually, the goal is 100% true and genuine human deep vulnerability, everything.

Oh, because the love gets returned as self-love, does it not? When you see that you give her the parts of you that you're ashamed of or that you think are ugly, and she's like, No, I accept you that way, too, because it's part of who you are, that's where you're not alone anymore. That's where you're not inside your body with that tempest all the time.

Exactly. To me, truly, genuinely, that someone... Emily is the most wonderful person I've ever met. Obviously, that's a very subjective statement. She's my wife.

You're biased.

I'm biased. However, when people meet her, they do see that there's something very special and magical about her. There just is an undeniable thing about her that everybody who knows her knows. It's not just me. People say that, objectively, there's something about her. I think if someone as wonderful as that loves me, there's got to be something good about me.

It sounds like she's cracked you open, though. It sounds like when I'm watching your special and you're romanticizing about the fact that you're doing it, not just in Chicago, but you said in the theater where you met her, correct?

No, it's the city where we met, but I have a personal connection to that theater as well, but not to do with our relationship.

Okay, but you met around work, right? You were obsessed with work.

I was doing stand-up a lot, and we met at a show. Yeah. Going back to do that, I got emotional immediately when I came out on stage. I had not expected that, and it's not something that I wanted to do. It just happened. To me, it was a good sign. It meant that I was situated enough in that moment to really feel it. Then we talked a lot about whether or not to put that little moment in the special. We tried it without it, but I was like, it speaks to what the special is about anyway. So we I decided to leave it in.

I want to talk about your journey. It's improbable. What do you regard as the most improbable part of it?

Truly all of it. I truly cannot It's hard to grasp. If I'd gone back to myself at any point, even in my 20s, to be like, This is what I would get to do, I would not believe it, especially because as a kid, I was very shy. I was very, very quiet, very It's very shocking to people that I do this. People who've known me. Now my parents have accepted it, but if you ask them, they'd be like, This is the last person we knew that we would expect to be doing this. There's a lot of luck involved. Right place, right time things. A lot of people have helped me and put their reputation on the line to give me chances, and I really appreciate that. None of it really makes sense. If there are parallel universes, this is the only one where I'm doing this.

Okay, so let me see if you've explored this part. Is part of your need to be vulnerable in public or to be biographical in public, how much of it comes from growing up in a city of 27 million people and perhaps feeling not seen?

I've never connected that. I'm not sure. I don't know how much of it comes from how I was raised or whatever. I just have always been a huge fan of movies and TV, big fan of pop culture. I don't know when it happened, but my entire life, as far as I can remember, I've always valued people revealing themselves through art. It's always been something that I've really connected to. I just did Conor O'Brien's podcast, and I was telling him this. When I was a little kid, I liked silly stuff, but I really liked stuff that showed me who someone was or got at some truth about something. I really always loved it. I fell in love with Bruce Springsteen. To me, his music is intensely personal, even though he's never been a blue-collar.

Even though it's all fraudulent.

Yeah, and he admits that. He talks about that.

Now he does. He sold us alive for many years. Now, he's got the wisdom of age.

Well, yeah, his one-man show on Broadway, which I watched, was a phenomenon where he talks about that. He's like, I've been a fraud. But very empathetic, right? And getting at, presumably, at least what I perceive as some truth about being a human being in this reality. When I started doing stand-up in the beginning, you're so terrified to get on stage that anything that you can hold on to when you're there is good. I was writing very jokey jokes for the first for a few years, but it was fairly early. It was four or five years in, which is pretty early for stand-up, where I realized I was like, Oh, I have to find a way to be myself on stage. That to me, otherwise, this isn't worth it. I was playing this persona of a guy who was really nervous because I was really nervous and it was very easy to lean into it. It was funny, and I was good at that comedy timing, the nervous comedy timing. But four or five years in is when I felt like a fraud I was like, This is only worth doing if I can really be myself on stage.

Then even in my writing and acting and all that, you talked about playing Stephen, Welcome to Chippendales. Even in that performance, my goal is to show parts of myself, is to reveal something of my insides on camera. That's always been something that I've really, really valued. I've never been... Like sketch comedy, for instance, which to me in some ways the opposite of that, at least how I perceive it. It's never been something that I've really, really... It's never been one of my things. I've tried writing it. I've tried acting in it. I'm not good at it. I didn't grow up loving sketch comedy. A lot of my friends are very, very good at it.

But wait, you grew up wanting to be a scientist, right? You're not going to have the same upbringing as your friends in this field in any way, are you? Before 18, you're not in this country. What access do you have other than television to learning some of these things?

Not at all. To me, watching movies and TV shows, I was like, Oh, these are made by gods far away. It's not something that people can make. I have friends, like nick Crawl, who I think is one of the funniest people in the world. He was doing little sketches and skits in his summer camp, and I've seen pictures of it. He's known for a long time. In a A lot of my friends have known since they were kids, this is what I want to do. I did not think that that was a possibility in any way. Even so now, it's been slowly the... I'm going to misuse this analogy, the frog boiling in water thing. There was never a moment where I was like, And now I want to go act in movies. It was all tiny steps that just led to this. I started doing stand-up. That was the first thing that I jumped into that I was like, I need to do this. I don't know how not to do this. I don't know how to do it, but I don't know how not to do it. The only thing that hurt more than getting on stage was not getting on stage.

From that, it's all been tiny little steps leading to this. I don't feel like there was ever a decision to… There have been decisions within that, like writing The Big sick with Emily and acting in it. I was like, I want to tell this story, and I want to be vulnerable in that way. But everything else has just been tiny little things.

I've heard you express regret for that being the one step that was too personal, you thought, that in The Big sick, that you went so autobiographical that you're like, something should be just mine. I don't have to give everybody everything.

Yeah, and there's some stuff in that that we didn't give to people. And Emily was actually very smart about that because I was like, put everything down. And Emily was like, no, some things are just ours. And Emily changed her family's last name in the movie. I did not, which I do regret. I think that was stupid. I do not regret doing the Big sick. There are things within that I would do differently, but I'm very proud of what we made with that. I do not regret it.

I didn't mean to suggest that you regret it, that just the portion that you learned there, maybe I shouldn't give everything to everyone.

Right. At least if you're giving stuff to people that hide it, write it into a zombie movie or something so that there's a little bit more distance, that felt uniquely naked. It felt like I had no safety net with that movie. I do like doing that, operating without a safety net. But this is, for instance, I realized the importance of a safety net even within acting. In Chippendales, I was doing a scene that was emotionally very challenging. I was using a personal memory to do it. I did it. The reality of acting as you're doing it 30, 40 times. But then halfway through, I was exhausted. I was like, Oh, I can't do this anymore. I have to figure out ways to... I can't access real-life stuff to get there. It works, but it takes a toll on me personally. That's when I realized that I don't think what I do should be making my life worse.

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How different was it then when you came over here at 18, and how difficult was that transition for you?

I love my upbringing. Had a great Great parents, really, really lucky upbringing. Like I said, Emily and I hosted a podcast called The Indoor Kids for many years about video games. I was certainly an indoor kid. A lot of movies, a lot of video games. There was a time in my life where I watched a movie every single day. I'd go to the video store, I'd get seven movies, watch each one, take them back, get seven more. That was really what I really, really loved. When I think back Also, we have a big family that's very close. My dad has four sisters. They all have kids. My mom has a sister and a brother. They all have kids. They didn't all live in Karachi. But every Friday, all of us would go out to dinner. It was 15, 20 people every single Friday. Those were the things I really loved as a kid. I loved my movies, my video games, and I loved just the fun of my extended family because I really have a great family, very fun, very loud, very funny. I was in Toronto doing stand-up, and then afterwards, a bunch of my family and I went out to a Pakistani restaurant, Karachi restaurant.

It was so good. But I was just so proud. I'm getting emotional. So proud of how great my family is. Those are the things I really, really loved. Hated school. Never liked it. It was very good at school. Got really good grades all the time, but I put a lot of pressure on myself there. Truly derived no joy from school. There were moments where I did derive joy from learning. I really loved learning. The reason I thought I wanted to be a scientist was I remember reading biology and chemistry, and when something made sense, it was a very exciting feeling. I was like, Oh, I feel like I understand. I remember specifically, I don't know how old I was, but reading about the digestive system and it all making sense to me when I was like, I don't know, 12, 13. That's the other thing. What I was learning in college here, my first two years, was stuff that I learned already in high school before that, especially math and science. I don't know how old I was. But I remember learning the rudimentary version of how the digestive system works and how exciting it was to me.

I was like, Oh, this is why I want to be a scientist because I like making sense of things in that way. But I did I don't enjoy school at all. I hated going. Every single day was miserable. When I was sick, it was really exciting. Emily liked going to school. I cannot imagine that.

But you were also getting bullied, right, in high school, or weren't you?

I got bullied in my last two years because I switched schools. In the other school, I was totally fine. I was invisible to the bullies, and I had my group of friends, and we were all like... I wouldn't say even what click we were. We were just friends. Actually, one time, I remember everyone liked me up until my last two years of high school. I was the nerdy kid that I was also friends with the bad kids because I had a breakfast club situation where I was in a detention once because I got roped into something that I'd never got in trouble, so this was a big deal. But I got detention with some of the bad kids, and we had a great time together. And I was like, Oh, these kids that I judged, that they were like, Can I swear? The shitty kids. I was like, Oh, they're great. They're cool. They're bad at school, but otherwise, they're great.

Well, it sounds like you probably just had a family that was surrounding you that, while loving, was also pushing you toward ambition in some ways. It couldn't be the arts as a career. It would have to be science. You weren't self-motivated to be great at things and not get into trouble. That had something to do with the environment you were in.

I mean, not really. Obviously, my parents wanted us to get good grades, but I did not really have parents who really were those kinds of... I don't remember that being part of it. I remember it being self-motivated because so much of it was, I think, not knowing who I was or not knowing what I was and thinking, Oh, I'm smart. If I'm good in school, that's the only way that I saw having any value as a human being was being good at school. I think it came from that. Emily always says with me, she's like, The call is coming from inside the house. It's been true my entire life. My parents didn't really push me super hard in that way. My younger brother, I think he's okay saying this, he did not get good grades. Obviously, he would get in trouble. But I wasn't like, Oh, I can't be like my because my parents will do this to me. They treated us pretty much the same. We weren't like, horribly punished kids or anything at all. So it was always pretty self-generated. Like, the need to study all the time. Sometimes my mom would be like, What are you doing?

You don't need to study all the time. I remember I would have a movie on and I'd just be studying, especially our system was very based on exams, you'd have testing at the end. During those two weeks, I literally studied morning to night, all day, every day more than anybody else I'd ever met. None of my friends were doing it. My family wasn't doing it. People in my family who got good grades weren't doing it. I was the one who was doing it. I always had this math of if I study this much, then I can play video games for this long. I still have that math in my head.

So you're doing the Marvel movie over here, and I can still do video games over here? Well, now you're voicing video games as well.

Yeah. If I've earned it, then I can do it. That's But these are all patterns that have been with me since I was a kid, and they helped me, obviously.

I was going to say, your way of being, while it may have been anxious and may have been tormented, you probably also assigned it as the fuel for your success, I would imagine, right?

Yeah, certainly. But the balance has been how do you have that be the field of my success while not being too hard on myself? But for instance, today, I didn't realize I had this mess up on my end. I woke up this morning and I had my morning. I had up until 11: 30. My first thing was 11: 30. I was like, Oh, I'm going to watch cricket this morning. And that's all I'll do. And even giving myself permission to do that is so much progress. Just to spend three hours this morning watching something. I've been really doing stuff. I've been very busy these days. Even that, giving myself permission to do that was an internal conversation.

You're just giving yourself little reward rewards for working hard.

Yeah, but even that's hard. It's hard to give myself those rewards because it feels like I should be doing something. It's really a problem. Do you have that?

I have trouble with balance, I would say, but I also really enjoy my work. The work sometimes is the reward in and of itself.

I mean, truly, I love my work. If I'm learning lines for a movie, there is a part of it that is work, But if I'm not enjoying the actual doing of it, I'm taking pride in the fact that I'm getting it done. It's all positive feelings. There's no part of my work that I don't enjoy. I'm very lucky to be able to say that.

I love that at the end of your special, of course, after telling us about Bagel and your pathetic and extreme love of cats that I recognize because my wife also will do things like you do with Bagel and make an assortment of names for the cat that are ridiculous At the end of it, you tackle therapy, and you just tackle all of it in terms of pushing down some feelings. I'm curious which you think has more to do with your till 40 years old or whatever repression of feelings. Would it be cultural or would it be gender? If one were more responsible than the other for you not being comfortable the first 35 years of your life expressing yourself.

I mean, the way that gender is defined, it is defined culturally. If I had to pick I would say gender. I'm wanting to be like a man. But that is defined by culture, the culture where I'm from or the culture here. Men are supposed to be a certain way, and there's a big overlap. Men don't get sad, men don't get scared, men walk a certain way, men talk a certain way. I remember, I think that if you were... Obviously, they're very linked, but I think, to me, the importance of being a man, a certain man, was the driving factor for not feeling these emotions or thinking that they're weakness or not liking myself for being so sensitive. Being sensitive is not manly. Being very aware of that as a teenager or even younger, being aware like, Oh, the way I speak is a little bit effeminate. The way I walk is a little bit... I remember working on my walk to be more manly, trying to walk differently. I remember wanting to get more into sports and those things. I mean, cricket really, I think, crosses all genders in Pakistan. I genuinely love cricket, but that wasn't...

My mom loves cricket, too. Not as much as I do, but she really loves cricket. She cares. I think it was being a man was a big thing. That came from knowing that naturally, I did not have the signifiers of a mandalina. So changing my walk, even now, I see people making fun of the way I speak, not because of my accent, because the thing is effeminate, whatever. I actually did a show with nick Kroll last week. We were both on stage together, and he was like, What VHSs did you have as a kid? The first four that came to mind were Gremlin's Two, Who From Roger Rabbit, Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. He was like, I always felt like you carry the masculine and feminine together. I was like, Oh, I'll take that as a compliment because for so many years, I tried to deny that. I mean, I've watched Sound of Music and Mary Poppins more than most human adults. I've watched it over and over.

It has to be most surreal to you to be on a Marvel set, right? From there, if I take all of the things you've done, and you've done a lot of fun stuff, whether it's V I mean, your range is pretty spectacular. But in terms of you looking around and being like, How the hell did this happen? It has to be a Marvel set, no?

Yeah, being a superhero on a Marvel set truly was, to me, the pinnacle. I decided It a few years ago, I did that movie. Before I did that movie, I was like, I want to play a superhero. Why not? Why not me? Yeah, that really was the pinnacle of excitement. It actually changed my relationship to my work because this ties in a lot of stuff, so I'm going to try and make sense. A lot of the stuff we're talking about. For a long time, every new job working, I realized was more the anxiety was too much. When I think back on my years doing Silicon Valley, I wish I'd enjoyed it more. I mean, I did enjoy it, but I wish I hadn't been so hard on myself the whole time. For me, I would feel this sense of relief when the season was done. Like, Oh, I can't fuck this up anymore. Before it started, terrible anxiety, fear. Do I deserve to be here? I shouldn't be here. They're going to find out that stuff. Especially being on that show with so many naturally funny people, I felt like I didn't deserve to be with them.

I know how much anxiety that and that was four months out of the year. Before I was about to go to Marvel, I was like, This is so big. This is so important to me that if I don't figure this aspect of it out, it's going to flatten me. I'm not going to survive this. I made a conscious decision in 2019, before I went to shoot that movie, I was like, I am going to have fun shooting this no matter what. Joy is going to be the primary way I engage with my work for the next six months. Just deciding that really worked. I had a great time doing that movie. Obviously, this pressure's in stress, but I didn't really feel that. For me, I was like, I can't believe I get to do this. It was really exciting. That changed my relationship to my work. Since then, every single job I've had, I get excited to do it. I do a lot of homework. I prepare a lot. I just did Oh, Mary, we were talking about before we started recording. It's a play on Broadway. Six years ago, seven years ago, I would not have been able to handle the pressure of that.

We have to go out and nail every single night after night.

What an interesting self-awareness to come by, though, to be somebody who considers himself laid back and doesn't realize he's angry, but then gets conscious enough to know this movie that would be my dreams, the idea that I'm appearing in a Marvel movie, would be something a 17-year-old me could not have possibly fathomed. To know yourself well enough. If I do not change my relationship with my work, this will crush me. And so you made the choice of joy, which shows a spectacular self-awareness and then changes your entire relationship with work, which to me is crazy to just be able to choose it, to trust the preparation and that you're good enough, that you're not a fraud, that you're not fooling everybody, and then to just do it like that. That has to be a product of your relationship mid-life and a lifetime of learning.

Yeah, but it really was. I mean, thank you for putting it that way. It was self-defense. It really was a survival thing. I was like, I'm not going to come out of this grinder alive if I don't change how I approach it. I had little I had little previews of what that life could be like, even though I hadn't really lived it. Sometimes when I was doing stand-up on stage, when I was really loose, I could feel like I could rift and come up with stuff I could not come up with if I sat down and wrote. I understood that having no pressure, being completely in the moment, being completely loose and having fun was creatively good for me. I understood that that's the mind space I want to be in is letting that go, forgetting, turning certain parts of my brain off is when I'm best. On the side of Silicon Valley, I planned stuff and whatever, but the stuff that happened just in the moment was the stuff I was like, that felt so much more alive than anything else. It was self-preservation, but also knowing that I was going to be I'm at my best when I'm loose and enjoying myself.

Even doing something like Welcome to Chippendales, which is a very dark character. There was joy in doing that for me.

But how much work are you doing before you come to this realization? Three quarters of your body of work?

Yeah, a lot of work. When I shot The Big sick, that was a very stressful experience. I remember we were shooting the last scene of the movie, and it was towards the end of the shoot. What a Emily and I talk about how we need another word for blessed that isn't religiously loaded. We need a non-denominational blessed. Because I say blessed, then suddenly it conjures images of religion. That was such a blessed, non-denominationly blessed experience. Getting to work with those people, Zoe, Holly, Ray, Michael, Jud, Barry, I mean, all these amazing people. When I look back on it, the entire time I was just thinking, Don't fuck this up. Don't fuck this up.

Don't fuck this up. This is true of Portlandia, of Veep, of Franklin and Basch, of only murders in the building, or only murders in the building is later, and you've got a different relationship.

Only murders is later. It's certainly true for Franklin and Basch. With Portlandia, Yeah. It isn't really because there's no script and it's all improv. There is truly no way to be like, Oh, I got to nail this line. You just really have to show up, talk to Fred and Carrie and go. Now, I would do a lot of research for that. My first The thing I did on that was I was doing a cell phone salesman. Even that, a lot of homework. I looked up the scripts that they... Because you've called back in the day when you're calling to change your plan and you're like, I just want to talk to a person. I know you're a person at some point, but you're not a person right now. You're reading dialog trees. I looked up those dialog trees and I learned them, I memorized them. I looked up a lot of cell phone models. I thought they were as ridiculous as car models. I was like, Okay, this is the area. I went in with a A lot of information there. I was nervous to start, but as soon as it started, you have to be so present that it takes away.

That's also what I love about acting is that you're so present when the cameras are rolling. I'm not thinking about what I just did or what I'm going to do. I'm just listening to you, watching you, and reacting to you.

That's really exciting. You've realized your mind is a poison, right? I don't know when it is. I always trusted my mind thinking it's the reason that I get places, and then I realized, well, it's also the thing that defeats me every time.

Oh, my God. Emily always says, your brain I didn't know anything. Your brain is stupid. I think with acting, with all my work, writing, obviously, there is an intellectual aspect to it, but really, it's whatever is happening, whatever is reacting is when I'm at my best. Franklin and Basch, full of fear the whole time. Silicon Valley, full of fear almost the whole time. Veep. Full of fear. Again, all the people around me were so good. Right.

Everyone's talented. All the people you're working with are super talented, and you know it.

Doing Veep was... I auditioned with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and we improvised, and I got that part. Then we did a bunch of rehearsals. Yeah, but full of Fear, Full of terror. Then now, when I start a new job, there's always nerves. The other thing is, when I was going to these jobs full of fear, nobody knew but me. I wasn't telling Emily. I wasn't telling Emily like, Hey, I'm really nervous for this. I just didn't think that that was a possibility. I thought saying it out loud would make it more real, but saying it out loud takes its power away is what I've learned. Now I'm starting a new job and I'm nervous, I will tell Emily like, Hey, I'm actually nervous about this one. I'm a little scared. That's been so helpful. Doing Old Mary, I was really, really open about how scared I was. That's the broader play. I'd never done a play in my life. I was very, very open and communicative about how scared I was going into that with Emily and with the other people, like with the director, with the other actors. I was like, I'm terrified. Oh, wow.

But so you seeing the achievement and just speaking it out loud to your wife suggests that you were super repressed before that. I was, yeah. Just alone with all of it, stoic, no one would have any It's a good idea, right? Except when the anger makes an appearance, and then it's just confusing to people.

Yeah. I remember I did a live show years ago, and someone asked me, she was like, How are you so confident? And I was like, What That is crazy that someone would think that about me. I feel more confident now than I ever have in my life just because... Emily would often be like, and this is a very nice thing to say, it sounds like I'm maybe talking myself up. She'd be like, I wish you could see yourself the way other people see you.

Or the way she sees you.

Or the way she sees me. I mean, the way she sees me, she's so wrong. But yeah, It was really, really, I would not say any of those experiences were joyful, and it was all completely my fault. As Emily says, the call is coming from inside the house. But Eternals changed my relationship to my work in that way. I just found out I'm going to be acting in something in a couple of months early next year, and I cannot wait to get started. Now, in other situations, I would have been like… I know I have a lot of work to do. I have a lot of prep to do. Between now and then, the other time, it would be like, Oh, my God, I can't wait for this to be over. Now, I can't wait for it to start. I'm so excited to do it. It really does come from the looseness of stand-up. I always felt like when you're on stage, I know there's a neurological thing that happens. It's called a flow state. It's like a real thing.

It's the zone in sports.

It's the zone, right.

I recognize it in your special. I didn't think that the stuff you were doing with the crowd was rehearsed. No. I thought that that was all you off on the top of your head. Yeah.

Quick. Yeah. I feel really lucky in that when I recorded that special, I recorded it at the exact right moment where I felt very confident in every single part of it, but I wasn't sick of it yet. I hadn't gone into the rote because that happens with stand-up. You do it a lot and then suddenly you're like... Before I was recording specials when I was just doing stand-up to crowds and it was disappearing, that was my gage for A bit is done was when like, Oh, they're not laughing anymore because it's I never got to that point with any of the material I did on stage because I did that special really quickly. From deciding I want to start stand-up again, hadn't done it in eight years, from that to recording the special was a year and a half, which is very quick from no material, having not done any stand-up to recording it, year and a half.

Was that scary, too, or were you excited about that?

About stand-up?

Was it scary? You go eight years without doing it. It was very scary. You've got this new relationship with who you are. You're more confident than you've been. I would have assumed it was the muscles. You're giving it all these other attributes. I would have assumed that you just became a Marvel.

No, we can talk about that.

That's interesting. You're not tired of talking about your body at this point?

No, but I can talk about it, how it related to my stand-up, specifically. Very scared to go back because I had not, I will be honest, I had not missed doing stand-up because I was feeling creatively fulfilled doing all this other stuff. What I missed was being good at something that was being good at something that I wasn't good at anymore. I hated the feeling of like, I remember at a certain... There were a couple of years when I was in New York where I was like, I've never been as confident about anything in my life as I was about stand-up in that period where I was like, I can go up in front of any crowd and do well right now with no material. When I think back on that, I was like, That felt like a different person. I could not imagine thinking like that. It was very, very scary. It was scary for a bunch of different reasons. It was scary. Most What's scary was, what if I can't do it anymore? What if I don't have it? It takes so long to get good at it. What if that part of me is dead?

Which is fine. I like this person that I am now.

Yeah, but you don't want to learn that on stage.

Right. That's the only way to learn it. You can only learn it on stage. Yeah, I was really scared to go back to stand-up. I went back, again, out of necessity because the strikes were happening. I was about to go shoot this movie. Suddenly, the strikes happened. I couldn't do anything. I was very frustrated creatively, and I was like, I have to go do stand-up, otherwise, I'm not going to survive however many months this is going to be.

. Hey, man.

Es gibt Leute, die drücken immer noch zu.

What represents the greatest fear in all of this stuff that we're talking about, what you regard as the most afraid you've been? They're not all the same, right? They're different every time. Is it Silicon Valley? You said that had a great deal of fear, but I don't know what would classify for you as the most terrified you were.

Out of all the jobs I've done?

Yeah, just everything beforehand.

Yes, Silicon Valley, I would say, because I was doing a show with people who I looked up to, people I was friends with, but also Mike Judge. I mean, Beavis and Bird Head was one of my favorite things.

Oh, so you're heroes, too.

Yeah. I'm working with people. I'm like, I know this is the big boy pool. I know this is like, Adult swim. This is the real deal. Working with legit people, the time to practice and train is done. This is payoff.

You don't feel like you belong, right?

I don't feel like I I don't feel like I deserve to be here with these people. They're so talented and funny. When I say that to them, I was like, You know what? They're like, What are you talking about? Nobody else saw that. I'm the only one who saw it.

But none of them are feeling it either. This is unique to you. Once you start expressing it to others, they're not all telling you, Yeah, I have imposter syndrome, too. No, they're not. They're confident in a way you don't understand.

I think that crew felt pretty confident about the place they were in at the time. Someone like Martin, who I'm still really good friends with, knows he's a very good actor. He knows that he could do a lot of things. He has a lot of confidence in that, and rightfully so, he's phenomenal. I've told him since then, I was like, I wish I was present enough to learn from you for those six years, because that's the thing I value most now. You can't I can't control if I'm acting in something, I can't control how it's going to turn out. I can control my experience of it, and I can control what I learn. I really, really, genuinely, I know it sounds cliché, every job is worth it to me because I always learn something about myself, or I pick up tricks from other people, all that stuff.

Age is so helpful here, though, right? It's not just that youth is wasted on the young. When I talk to athletes, because their careers so often end at about late 30s or whatever, they're like, I wish I'd enjoyed it more. But you feel like you're being chased all the time. You feel like part of what makes you good is that you always feel like you're being chased. So you stay hungry and it becomes a cycle of you don't enjoy much of what you're doing. This is the sweet spot for you to be confident and just take stuff that you know you can enjoy.

I'm feeling like I still have a lot to learn, and I cannot wait to get at it. We were talking about Silicon Valley. Like I said, I wasn't present enough to learn. I wish I had been. I feel like I personally... I mean, I learned a lot. I truly did learn a lot, but I learned a lot later. Looking back, I felt like I internalized some of that stuff when I was already done with it. But doing Chippendales people like Annali Ashford or Murray Bartlett or Robin, all these amazing actors. I learned so much. I was in film school. I was in acting school for four months with the best actors in the universe. And actively being aware of how much I was learning from them. I am in the sweet spot because I do feel confident, but I still feel like I have oceans to learn in this regard.

Well, this is wonderful because now the science book nerd and you who loved studying 12 hours a day, now the preparation. If you're ambitious and eager about learning, then all of a sudden, just all of Hollywood opens up to you. All of creativity opens up to you.

Yeah, and I really, really am. I value it genuinely very much, and I love it very much. To me, whenever people ask me how I choose acting roles, I wanted to be 10% to 20% outside of what I know. I remember reading all the scripts for Chippendales and being like, I don't know how to do this scene right now.

I admired the choice that you made there. When I saw you in that, I'm like, whoa.

It's a big swing.

It's just so different.

It's so different. I love doing that. I did a part in Pokerface last year that was also like I played a Florida Panhandle Cop. Different for me, but I learned the accent and I did it all. That was really, really thrilling to do. With acting, for me, it's like, how many things can I find that I can hold on to as the character that helped me? With Steve and Chippendales. There's always an image that helps me. It takes months to get to the point. With Chippendales, I knew I had four months to prepare. It's a little scary because the first couple of months, you're like, What if I don't figure out what he is? Then for me, there's always an image or something that suddenly I'm like, Okay, I understand what this is now. But getting to that image takes a while for me. But But I think it's also trusting myself to be able to do a performance like that because he's so different from me. He walks so differently, he talks so differently. That's the other thing is realizing in certain ways, it's even hard to say, I do know what I'm talking about.

I feel confident enough to be like, Hey, this thing, I think it should be like this. Yesterday, I had a conversation with the director for a movie I want to do, and I was like, I love this script. Here's some things about this specific character that I think I would like to do. Just being able to have that confidence to be like, This is a great script. The writer is phenomenal.

You're saying as you speak it out loud now that it's hard for you to say that I know what I'm doing here.

It's even hard for me to say that.

I know what I want. I know what I want is something that's hard for you to say.

I know what I want is hard for me to say, and also that I know what I want is going to make the movie better. I know that if you listen to this, you don't have to listen to all of it, but if we can find a way to make this work, I think the movie is going to be better.

But it's hard for you to say that I have the confidence in my expertise and my talent and my discernment that what I think here is going to make this better. It's hard for you to say.

It is. It sounds arrogant. It sounds like, who am I to say? These people obviously know what they're doing.

You've done some learning over the last 20 years.

Yeah, I really I have, and I have learned. There's a movie I want to direct now. I've never directed before. I'm really having this strong feeling where I'm like, this movie, I know this movie. I feel like at this point in time, I didn't write it. Emily and I rewrote it, but I know at this point, there's no one in the world who knows this movie better than I do. There's truly nobody in the world. That is a great feeling that happens when you're playing a character, too, where you're like, I know this character better than anybody else the world. Being able to even articulate that, I think it took me a long time to be able to say that. Even now, I feel like you clocked. I feel a little weird saying it.

Tell me about what sent you to therapy, really.

I started taking acting classes because I knew I wanted to make the big sick. Actually, I started acting classes because there was a specific scene in Silicon Valley where I was like, Oh, I don't have access to this. There's a thing happening here that I need to do. What it was was, I think it's the end of season 2 or 3, it's really great where we're at the house and Thomas Richard is outside doing a court case, it's intercutting back and forth. Each time it comes back to us, we're a little more freaked out. The stakes are raised incrementally 20% each time. I was like, Oh, I know how to be freaked out. I know how to not be freaked out, but I don't know how to do all the steps in between. I remember specifically being like, Okay, this is the moment where I decided I need to take acting classes because you're afraid to open that door because behind that door is the knowledge of how much you don't know. That's the most terrifying thing to me. Before you get to learning, you have to accept that you need to learn. And accepting that you need to learn is very, very scary.

That was the moment where I was like, I need to figure this out. I don't have access to this. If I want to hang with all these people, I got to get good at this. Then around that same time, we started talking about doing the big sick. We were writing it. Judd Apata was producing it. I was like, If I want to have a shot at making this, I need to figure this out. I started taking acting classes then. My acting teacher, Myra Turley, who I still work with, who's one of the people who's changed my life, you have to access your own feelings. As I was doing that, I was like, Oh, my God, there is so much in here. There's so much in here, and I had no idea it was in here. Because you think you're a certain way. I had a certain narrative about myself, laid back, whatever. Then as soon as I started trying to access, and you can access it by doing things with the body, suddenly was getting a glimpse of everything that was inside, and it was like a horror movie. I was like, Oh, my God.

Do you know Hellraiser? You know those movies? When you get a glimpse of hell with the cenobites, it's just a flash of character sees it. It felt like that.

This is the lagoon of feelings I've pushed down I was 12.

I've been trying to avoid that. Shut that door. What was that? It was like that. It was like in Nightmare on Elm Street, when sometimes it falls deep for a second in the glimpse of Hellworld, and then when you wake up, it was like that. But I was like, Okay, I need to do this for two reasons. One, because I wanted to get really good at acting. It really started from a practical place. I was like, I need to know all this stuff that's going on inside here that I know now is there, and it's undeniable because you open the door and you're Shut it again. That's when I was like, Okay, there's a lot here. In order to be a better actor, I also need to go to therapy to see what all is going on in there. It was It was actually I took acting classes for years. I didn't start going to therapy until much later. But it really was from that. Emily encouraging me, being like, There's so much inside you that you don't know. You need to really... Because she was a therapist for many years. She You really, really encouraged me and pushed me to, and I know how it sounds.

So your spouse being like, You need to go to therapy. No, but it was supportive.

It was love. It's not just supportive. It's just you need to love yourself better. You need to forgive yourself better. I've got a lot of questions about what it's like to work with Emily, and I want to get to those in a second. But when you're talking about all of the fear and anxiety and doubt in your path, where did you get to joy? Was it just with the conscious decision after the pandemic that I am going to do this Marvel film, which I've read didn't go the way that it wanted to in terms of you signed a It was a six-part deal, and some of that hasn't gone the way that it was anticipated, but you made a choice at the beginning and that was it? That's all you had to do was choose joy?

I mean, that was most of the battle. It's weird. Emily always is like, it's not just self-awareness. It's also you got to do something about it. So it came from that. By that point, I'd realized, Oh, work is very hard for me. I make it very hard for myself. I do not enjoy it. I'd understood all that. I was like, Okay, now it's time for the second step, which is doing something about it. When I chose, I'm going to be joyful during this, it was like a weight lifted off me. It's like I gave myself permission to have doing it. That was a huge part of it. I realized I thought that you are just the way you are. It's not true. You're choosing it. I meditate every day now, almost every day. But when I meditate, I'm realizing, Oh, I'm choosing to be a certain way. You can change your mood at certain times.

Well, the meditation, though, is... Forgive me for interrupting you. I would imagine it has to do with whatever you've learned about present. I have heard that phrase for many, many years. It is not until recently with age, with mortality, that I've recognized, If I'm not living in regret or I'm not living in fear, if I'm not in the future, if I'm not in the past, if I'm right here and aware and conscious of what it is that's happening, but it took me a long time to get there. It's a hard thing. Meditation has been helpful in that regard in that you're just trying to block out thoughts. You're aspiring to just be centered in your breathing. Yeah.

I find I tell a lot of people about it. Obviously, in this industry, I have a lot of friends who are anxious and they're like, I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm not good at it. I'm like, there's no good or bad at it. The attempt is what matters. Sometimes I'll have sessions where I'm done, where I'm like, Wow, that was transformative. Then sometimes nothing happens. But even when nothing happens, a little something happens. I've never had a meditation session that I've regreted or even one that I've thought didn't give me anything. Even from the beginning, the first time I did it, I was like, That was valuable.

It's just the choice to still your mind, right?

Yeah, and it's hard. It's hard to still your mind. But even if you're not successful in it, just the attempt is worthwhile because then even you find out sitting there, Oh, these are the things that are bothering me right now. Even that awareness is important. Really, it was the choice to have it be a joyful experience that did a lot for me. But then it evolved since then, too, in that... I'm trying to be able to... I'm trying to see how to articulate it. I find the joy in learning. I find the joy in knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know. And knowing what I know is hard to still admit. It makes me a better person. It makes me better at my work. It also makes me my writing deeper, too. It makes me I don't know, just get inside myself more.

You say the joy of learning, but you also say it's very scary. You seem to have a much different relationship with learning than I do in that I sometimes shackling myself because learning requires failure, and if I'm hard on myself about failure, I then don't try things that I know I'm going to fail at when I'm not going to learn them if I'm not willing to embrace the trying.

For me, I learned that lesson undeniably in acting, where it's like, let's say you're doing six takes and I work with people who will try different things every time. I don't mean they're trying new words. They're just taking different swings each time. If it doesn't work, they're like, Oh, that didn't work. That, giving yourself... People ask me, directors will ask me, What do you value in a director as an actor? I'm like, Just the room to fail, the safety to fail is by So far, the most important environment that a director can create is feeling okay with failure. And all through Silicon Valley, it wasn't their fault on me. If I had a take that was bad, I was very hard on myself. Now, if I try something and a take doesn't work, it's like, Okay, great. Let's do something else. Let's go again. Let's try something else. So for me, the importance or the failure is necessary, and I realized that in acting. When I'm at my I'm failing more often than I'm not on set. I'll do a take. It takes you two or three takes to get one where you're like, All right, now I understand the scene.

Now let's try different things. When you're trying different things, More often than not, they don't work. But when they do work, it can be really magical.

Tell me about working with Emily. What are the challenges that people might not see? There are great many dangers in working together. The foundation of your relationship, I would imagine, started with the work.

Well, we were together for a few years before we started working together, and we did go quite slowly in that I was hosting something and she was producing it. We were working together, but it wasn't creative work together, which to me is the most challenging. Then we were hosting a podcast together. That's creative work, but not really. You're not sitting down to be like, Okay, let's figure this out. It's very in the moment. When we first wrote The Big sick together, that was the first time we had creatively engaged. There is danger in working with a spouse because the fight can go all the way down. If you're working with a coworker, You can get into it, but there's a floor as to how deep the battle can go. With this, it can get personal and suddenly you're in. Again, it's been a lot of conversation. I feel like we've gotten very good at it now. Still, there's still disagreements and challenges and all that. But you really have to go, Okay, now we're in work mode. Again, just saying that does make a difference. Like me saying, I'm going to be joyful, it does make a difference.

We're in work mode, it does make a difference. When you live with someone who's a coworker, you could really be at work the whole time. That's a danger. So we have rules. If it's a weekend, she has an idea. She has to ask permission. She's like, Hey, can we talk about work for a second? We stick to that. We've had that rule forever. We don't talk about work in bed at all. That stuff is very important. For me, the excitement of it is, I think she's a phenomenal writer, and I'm the first person in the world that gets to look inside her brain. I'll read pages and I'm like, You just sat there and you wrote this. This came out of you. When you were there, when I saw you, this is what you were working on, it's such a privilege. But it's still challenging because writing is such a personal thing, and it can be if she's like, Hey, I don't like this.

Vulnerable, intimate, super intimate.

Feelings get hurt. And again, for me, I have to say my feelings are heard about that.

Well, you're Your feelings being hurt. I can't imagine what happened to you post-9/11 where you're doing stand-up and you're getting heckled.

What a segue, by the way.

I can't imagine. Because you're sensitive, that seems like a terrible position to be choosing to be on stage doing comedy, and now the heckler's in your feelings.

A lot of things happen at the same time when someone heckles you for that. One, there is at its core a safety net where you understand it's not about me, it's about them. It's their fault. They're not really... If someone's really heckling me in a personal way or they see inside my soul and they're heckling me, that's genuinely hurtful. This, I understand, it's what I represent to them in this moment. I know the fault is theirs. However, you feel very reduced. You feel very flattened to one aspect of you, which is the fact that I'm brown. Even though you understand it's their fault, it does make you feel smaller. That wasn't something I ever internalized. Getting hackled in that way wasn't, I say, damaging in the way that... Like the Emily Really reading a line I wrote and going, I don't like this, has the potential to be way more damaging than someone saying, Hey, where's Osama? It's not going to get deep. It's something that I am in mortal danger, so that's something. But it's not something I'm going to carry with me all week. It's just something for me, the heckling thing was, Oh, I need to figure out how to deal with it.

That's actually when I started learning to be more present on stage and having to rift was from that stuff, was from getting heckled and being like, If I want to do this, I have to figure out how to react to something that's just happened in the room. Not just heckling, other stuff, to other kinds of heckles, not just racist heckles. That led to me realizing all this stuff we're talking about. It does come, in a way, grateful for post-911 on stage racist heckling because it led me to where I am now, which is the value of understanding of being in the present.

A nondenominational blessing of sorts. Yes. Thank you for being so gentle about that segue straight from your wife and working on to be into racist heckling.

No, no, no. Please don't be. Are Are you being hard on your sofa it?

I'm being sensitive more than hard on myself.

Okay, don't be sensitive. I truly, truly, truly.

That was a terrible segue.

No, do not. See, let me take this from you. This is mine. This is not on you.

You're going to take it back.

I'm sorry I said that. I did not mean it.

It was accurate. It was totally accurate. Yeah, it was. You shouldn't take it back. It was truth. It was a hard truth I had to see.

It made the podcast better. It made it more interesting. It really did. You brought up something that was interesting to you that you wanted to talk about. I think it just made it an interesting moment. Be thankful to your sofa it.

We didn't get to the muscles. We're out of time. We are.

We're out of time. I'll tell you really quickly how muscles change. When I started doing stand-up again-You don't have to rush. I was I was defaulting to how I used to be on stage 10 years ago. That was my muscle memory. Pardon the pun. Emily said, The way people perceive you is very different from how you perceive yourself and how people used to perceive you. She's like, You're The delivery is going to have to change. Who you are on stage is going to have to change because people's experience of you is very, very different. Then she's the one who also said, All this stuff you talk about masculinity and vulnerability and the importance of it. She's Coming from someone who looks like you now, who in some ways represents physically a type of man that, again, hard for me to say, people do aspire to in terms of physical form. I understand now that people look at me and some men are like, I would like to look like that only because they say it to me all the goddamn time. She said, Looking the way you do now, it is valuable to have you saying certain things.

If you're a nerd on stage and you look nerdy and you're talking about, It's important to be vulnerable, that's not as perhaps impactful as me being muscly on stage and talking about the importance of being valuable and the importance of talking about that certain masculinity and what its strengths and its weaknesses. All that, my hour-long special now is what it is because I wanted to be vulnerable on stage, especially because I look different now.

Night Thoughts is the name of the special. It's Hulu. It debuts tomorrow, December 19th. If indeed, you're watching this, December 18th. Thank you so much. Also, Ella McKay is in theaters now.

Yeah, and I'm in the next season of Fallout. So Fallout Season 2, which is out right now or coming out soon. I'm in a couple of episodes. I love that show.

Really appreciate it. I hope I get to do this with you again. There's a whole lot of ground that I did not cover.

Let's do it. I very much enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.