Category: Kumail Nanjiani

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Kumail Nanjiani Marvel Mental Health Movies

Kumail Nanjiani ‘shattered’ by Eternals’ reception after signing on for 6 movies

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Marvel’s Eternals came out in 2021. Non-Marvel fans may remember it as the movie that Kamail Nanjiani got super buff for. It was a part of the MCU’s Phase 4, which kicked off with Black Widow and continued with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. Marvel was really feeling itself during this time period because all four of these movies and five television series were released in 2021, with three more movies and three more series coming out in 2022. It was the beginning of Marvel Fatigue.

In addition to Nanjiani, Eternals had a huge cast full of well-known actors like Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, and Kit Harington. The only Eternals tie-in we’ve gotten in the 11 movies that have followed it was a plot point in Captain America: Brave New World, with no Eternals appearances. The movie has been basically abandoned, which is interesting because according to Kumail, there were big plans for the Eternals characters, but in the aftermath of its poor reception, everything got scrapped. He signed on for six movies and was really excited about entering his Marvel Era. When none of it came to fruition, he was left “shattered.”

It took until this year for Captain America: Brave New World to finally address the half-risen Celestial in the room, but that’s honestly the closest the MCU has come to acknowledging the events of Eternals. It’s hardly a surprise, really. In the post-Avengers: Endgame era, the movie was the first major misfire from Marvel Studios that, according to one of its stars, had a whole blueprint mapped out that never came to fruition.

During an appearance on the Working It Out podcast, Nanjiani revealed just how much he’d committed to before the film’s release, and the shock he experienced when it didn’t receive the warm welcome like the other MCU movies that predated it. “It came out, it got really bad reviews, and it didn’t do that well. It shattered me too much,” the actor who played Kingo confessed. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, I need to go to therapy to figure this out.’”

The film earned one of the worst scores on Rotten Tomatoes at 47%, etching ahead of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania which sits at the bottom of the pile. For Nanjiani, it wasn’t what he expected at all. “I was like, ‘This is going to be my job for the next ten years.’ I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. They make you sign on for all this stuff. You’re like, ‘Okay, so I’ll be doing Marvel movies every year, and in between, I’ll do my own little things. Whatever I want to do.’”

[From Games Radar]

Kumail has been pretty open about how devastated he was after Eternals failed to go anywhere. I think he’s a real-life super hero for putting it out there that he was so disappointed about the professional failure that he went into therapy. I’ve always appreciated his honesty and felt badly about how he got a raw deal. Up until that point, every Marvel movie had led to multiple opportunities to reappear in different ways within the franchise. It’s not his fault, though. Eternals was fine, but it was also too long with a lot of plot holes and too many storylines. I think the MCU burned bright and fast, and execs realized that they needed to cut costs, so eliminating a cast of people who automatically commanded a higher pay was probably a no-brainer for them.

Also, I recently rewatched Shang-Chi and it was just as much fun as I remembered. Simu Liu is a delight. While there are supposedly still plans for a second movie, nothing is concrete right now. Marvel really did do a huge disservice to the new characters it was trying to bring into the fold.

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photos credit: Backgrid, Cat Morley/Avalon, Getty and via Instagram

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Aliens Kumail Nanjiani Paranormal Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg: aliens are ‘already here, they’ve been here for quite some time’

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Alright, you guys, we are back to one of my favorite topics: the paranormal! To recap, I am fascinated by all of these supernatural, Universe-y type things. I’m talking about ghosts, dreams, intuition, synchronicities, aliens, psychic abilities, etc. I love hearing other people’s stories, too. But onto the topic at hand! Kumail Nanjiani was on The View this week to promote the new Ghostbusters movie, Frozen Empire. Naturally, the topic of conversation had to include a question about whether or not Kumail believes in ghosts, because of course it did. When Sunny Hostin floated it out there, Kumail responded that while he didn’t believe in ghosts, he does, in fact, believe in aliens. Whoopi really turned the convo up, though, when she shared that not only does she believe in extraterrestrials, she knows for a fact that they’re already here, “watching us.”

While Nanjiani said, “I don’t believe in ghosts, I’ve never had an encounter or anything,” he did bring another intriguing idea to the roundtable.

“I’ll tell you what, I do believe in aliens,” Nanjiani boasted. “I think aliens are circling us, waiting for us to get it together so they can come on down. … I think they’re waiting for us to clean up a little bit so that they can come here and tell us we’re really messing things up.”

That’s when a soft-spoken Goldberg, 68, spoke up and said, “They’re already here. They’ve been here for quite some time.”

A surprised Nanjiani needed clarification, asking, “You think they’re here? What are they doing?”

“They’re watching us,” a very serious Goldberg responded.

Hostin, 55, tried bringing some levity to the situation and joked, “They’re talking to Whoopi.”

Given the nature of the conversation, cohost Sara Haines couldn’t help but bring up Goldberg’s Oscar-winning movie to close out the wild conversation.

“She talks to ghosts, not aliens,” Haines, 46, said. “Duh, the movie was Ghost, not Alien.”

This isn’t the first time Goldberg brought up her belief in aliens. Back in 2023, Goldberg said she already “knew” about their existence before a congressional hearing on UFOs and aliens claimed the U.S. government recovered “nonhuman” remains from space objects.

“I don’t know why everybody else is so surprised. We’re not the only ones in the universe. We’re just not,” Goldberg explained. “There are more things in heaven and Earth that we are aware of, and we have to be aware of, because that is the nature of being an earthling. It’s going to happen, it has happened, and, so far, we’re alright.”

Still, Goldberg did her best to combat any panic about any supernatural beings, instead insinuating that perhaps they just want to be friends.

“I can say I haven’t seen any zapping happen, I haven’t seen things that you see in the movies, so, maybe they’re not adversaries,” Goldberg said. “Maybe they’re just trying to get along!”

[From Us Weekly]

Well, okay then, Whoopi! Tell us more, I am all ears. I’m not kidding when I say that I love hearing first-hand accounts of anything supernatural. When we talked about Kevin Bacon’s haunted shack, I loved hearing everyone’s stories so much. Some of y’all even recommended podcasts and I subscribed to them, so thank you! As far as aliens go, I do believe that there are so many things that we don’t understand about whatever exists outside of or even within our physical world. Like Whoopi said, it’s such a huge universe out there that it’s difficult for me to believe that we’re the only ones within it. It feels arrogant to think that we are. I mean, it would go a long way to explaining Ron DeSantis, #amirite? JK, JK. But seriously now I want to know what exactly Whoopi knows and how she knows it.

If you’re interested in hearing more on the subject of UFOs and aliens, CB covered the Netflix documentary Encounters last year. Definitely check it out if you’re into this topic.

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Kumail Nanjiani Marvel Movies

Kumail Nanjiani got therapy after The Eternals was panned: ‘that was tough’

kumail-nanjiani-got-therapy-after-the-eternals-was-panned:-‘that-was-tough’




I really like Kumail Nanjiani. He’s had such an interesting, varied career and seems like a really solid, thoughtful, intelligent, and down-to-earth dude. I listened to his and his wife Emily’s podcast for a little while back in 2020 and found them to be really endearing. There was one episode in which they were arguing about whether you should wet your hands before or after applying soap to wash them and – no joke – this debate has lived rent-free in my mind for four years. I think about it at least once a week.

Anyway, after Kumail was cast in one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies, The Eternals, he started working out and underwent a major body transformation to get mega-buff. The transformation was so widely talked about in an industry that values physical looks more than anything else that Kumail ended up getting worried that he was unintentionally part of the problem. Unfortunately, The Eternals didn’t do so well amongst critics or at the box office. Kumail took it so hard that he had to seek therapy afterwoods.

The actor Kumail Nanjiani has said that bad reviews for Eternals, Marvel’s little-loved 2021 blockbuster, affected him so deeply he started seeing a therapist. Speaking on Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast, Inside of You, the actor said: “The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it. I was reading every review and checking too much.”

Eternals features a group of immortal aliens who emerge from hiding after thousands of years to protect the planet from their ancient counterparts. Nanjiani played Kingo, a fame-loving Eternal who can create cosmic energy projectiles and becomes a Bollywood star to blend in on Earth. Nanjiani undertook many months of fitness and dance training to prepare for the role; his physical transformation attracted much heat on social media in the run-up to the film’s release.

Anticipation was high for the movie, the first from acclaimed director Chloé Zhao since Nomadland swept the Oscars. Trailers had hinted at the ambitious scope of the plot and visuals – which often eschewed CGI, to the surprise of Marvel boss Kevin Feige – and the inclusivity of the film’s cast, which featured the franchise’s first gay and first deaf protagonists, was much applauded.

But critics were lukewarm on the final film, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw saying: “There are some nice touches and an attractive new diversity worn lightly, but this is an underpowered and uncertain film.”

The film has a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and US audiences exiting the film polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B – the lowest score ever achieved by a Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

“It was really, really hard,” said Nanjiani, “because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, so they lifted the embargo early and put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour to promote the movie right as the embargo lifted.”

Nanjiani said this unfortunate timing was “heightened” by the press tour taking place during the Covid pandemic.

“I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie,” he said. “It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way any more. Some shit has to change, so I started counselling. I still talk to my therapist about that.

“Emily says that I do have trauma from it,” he continued. “We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, ‘That was tough, wasn’t it?’ and he’s like ‘Yeah, that was really tough’, and I think we all went through something similar.”

[From The Guardian]

I feel bad for Kumail. I think Marvel thought the movie was going to be well-reviewed because of the amount of well-known actors that appeared in it. I saw The Eternals in theaters and while I liked it, I was underwhelmed. It was way too long, there were too many storylines going on at once for a movie that was introducing new characters, and there were a lot of plot holes. Plus, none of that movie has really come back into play within the MCU to make people revisit it. None of this was Kumail’s fault, though! He was great and one of the better parts of the movie. But I can absolutely see why he’d take it so hard. He put in *the work* for that movie. At the time, Marvel still had a decent track record, as it was still early in Phase 4 and IMO, things didn’t really go sideways until Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. (I love Black Widow and will die on that hill.) Hopefully, the Marvel gods find another way to get Kumail back for a future movie.

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Photos credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images, Cat Morley / Avalon, Getty

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Christina Hendricks Fashion Heidi Klum Joe Manganiello Joseph Gordon Levitt Kumail Nanjiani Patricia Arquette

Christina Hendricks wore a corseted look & terrible makeup to the Art of Elysium gala

christina-hendricks-wore-a-corseted-look-&-terrible-makeup-to-the-art-of-elysium-gala

Back in the day, the Art of Elysium gala used to be a much bigger deal. They used to get more Young Hollywood people at the gala than the Golden Globes the following day. These days, not so much. This year’s gala was a tribute to Neil Gaiman and it was sparsely attended. Christina Hendricks was one of the biggest-name “fashion girls” there and her corseted look was… yikes. It looks like a bad costume – the shades of red don’t match and her hair & makeup are appalling.

Heidi Klum walked the carpet with her daughter Leni, who is very cute. I’m getting a Cindy Crawford-Kaia Gerber vibe, as in Heidi is trying to nepotize her daughter into the modeling industry.

Joseph Gordon Levitt barely shows up on any red carpets these days, but look! He looks great.

Patricia Arquette looks like she raided a ‘70s thrift shop.

Here’s Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon. He’s maintained his chiseled look!

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And finally, here’s Joe Manganiello with his new girlfriend Caitlyn O’Connor. They began dating several months after he split with Sofia Vergara. I bet they get married.

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Photos courtesy of Getty, Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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Kumail Nanjiani

Kumail Nanjiani worries his jacked body is perpetuating toxic masculinity

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It’s funny to me that Kumail Nanjiani’s current career reads like a fairy tale and a parable. A funny, nerdy Pakistani immigrant finds success as a comedian and actor, but only while playing variations on “the South East Asian nerd.” Kumail then transformed his body to play a superhero, hoping that it would open up conversations and break the nerd typecasting. And now… people just want to talk to Kumail about his body transformation. He’s still the same nerd! He’s just ripped now. And I’m not sure he’s still enjoying all of these interviews where he’s asked constantly about his body. Kumail has a good profile in GQ to promote The Eternals, and yes, it’s mostly about getting ripped. Some highlights:

When he was a kid, a classmate called him Chicken Shoulders. “It would’ve been better if I was like, ‘Hey, I like how I look. F–k ‘em all.’ But I didn’t do that.”

He’s tired of people asking about his body: “I’ve found out over the last year and a half, since I did that picture, that I am very uncomfortable talking about my body—and it’s become less and less and less comfortable.”

He really wanted to take The Eternals seriously: “If I’m playing the first South Asian superhero, I want to look like someone who can take on Thor or Captain America, or any of those people,” he says. But also because the character shrouds himself in the guise of a Bollywood star. Nanjiani grew up watching Bollywood movies—“From the ’60s to the ’90s I know basically every big [one],” says Nanjiani—so he knows those guys are jacked. “I was like, I want this to be believable. I want to feel that kind of powerful in this role.”

He’s worried he’s perpetuating the toxic image of masculinity that he grew up idolizing. “It is aggression. It is anger. A lot of times we are taught to be useful by using physical strength or our brain in an aggressive, competitive way. Not in an empathetic way. Not in an open, collaborative way. It’s the same thing when you have all these guys, like, asking people to debate them on Twitter. That’s the same as arm wrestling. It’s about defeating. And that’s what the male ideal has been. Dominating. Defeating. Crushing. Killing. Destroying. That’s what being jacked is.”

Men look at him nowadays like they want to fight him: “I just see the little child inside them, like a little child pretending to be a big, strong man. It’s laughable if it wasn’t so f–king devastating—and causing so many problems in the world. I just want to be like, Dude, if you learn how to cry, you’d just be a lot happier.”

Why he’s posted photos of his jacked body: “I wanted different types of opportunities. I wanted the industry to see me differently. With brown people, there are very specific roles that we used to get. Either we’re terrified or we’re causing terror. Those are the only two options we had. Either I’m fixing your computer, or I’m, like, planning something at the stock exchange. I shared [those photos] specifically to be like, Hey, I needed to change how people saw me so I could have the type of opportunities I was excited about. And those did happen! Now I get those opportunities. I don’t just mean action stuff. I mean, like, now I get opportunities to play a normal guy. I was not seen as a normal guy before this.”

[From GQ]

It’s crazy that he’s sort of seeing the darker side to being a strong, jacked-looking guy, which is that other men now want to start sh-t. I never would have predicted that, but I believe him. The toxicity of men is something I’ll never doubt or understand. And Kumail is right, it’s just like “dude, learn how to cry.” Learn how to deal with sh-t another way. You don’t actually have to live in this bubble of toxicity. You don’t have to perform your masculinity. Anyway, I love Kumail and I hope he gets all of the movies he wants!

Kumail Nanjiani for the November issue of GQ, photographed by Aaron Sinclair and styled by Mobolaji Dawodu. Read the full story by @SkipperClay here: https://t.co/SHbzs5L5jJ pic.twitter.com/dBGCnKolSw

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) October 7, 2021

Photos courtesy of GQ.

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Barry Keoghan Fashion Gemma Chan Kumail Nanjiani Richard Madden salma hayek

Salma Hayek in striped Saint Laurent at the UK ‘Eternals’ premiere: circus-y?

salma-hayek-in-striped-saint-laurent-at-the-uk-‘eternals’-premiere:-circus-y?

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

After skipping all of the Eternals promotion in Italy, Salma Hayek was back for promotion in the UK this week. She attended last night’s premiere/screening with the cast, and like Angelina Jolie, Salma has been bringing her kid to the big events. I kind of think “doing it for their kids” was the reason why both Salma and Angelina signed on to the Eternals. They wanted to do a fun movie which their teens would like to see. Plus, it’s Marvel and very few people say no to Marvel. Anyway, Salma has not been hitting it out of the park sartorially for the Eternals’ promo. She wore this Saint Laurent dress which looks pretty dated and ‘80s. I’m sure that’s “the style” these days, but yikes. Weirdly, this dress made me think of Dakota Johnson and how she gets paid to be a Gucci girl, and she would probably make this look very cool. Valentina is adorable too! She’s only 14 years old.

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

Someone who has been killing it throughout the promotion? Gemma Chan! Her stylist PREPARED. Her stylist got all the look-books and put together a style story and assembled a world-class glam squad, because Gemma has looked completely gorgeous and badass throughout. In London, she wore this Zuhair Murad “hooded” gown. She looks like she could be in a Star War!

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

More photos: Kumail (looking cute), Barry Keoghan and Richard Madden.

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

'Eternals' London film premiere - Red Carpet

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

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Angelina Jolie Kumail Nanjiani

Kumail Nanjiani ‘learned so much’ from watching Angelina Jolie & Salma Hayek

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angelina jolie salma hayek kumail

The Eternals doesn’t come out until November 5th, but I cannot wait for the big promotional tour. Mostly, I’m interested in the interviews from the stars, because I keep getting the impression that this Marvel film had really good vibes. Gemma Chan made it sound like she felt so relaxed to be among friends. Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie are BFFs now. And Kumail Nanjiani seems like he’s one of the nicest guys ever. Kumail chatted recently about how he got along really well with Angelina and Salma:

Kumail Nanjiani couldn’t have been more impressed with his Eternals co-stars, especially Angelina Jolie. The actor, who takes on the role of Kingo in the upcoming Marvel movie, opened up to ET’s Rachel Smith about how the movie star was behind the scenes. He also dished on what he learned from Jolie and Salma Hayek while on the set.

“Angie, she would not go back to her trailer. She always hung out on set. She was always with everyone,” Nanjiani shared while at the Saks Fifth Avenue New York Fashion Week party. “So I realized what you do on camera is only part of the job.”

“Salma was the one who would always have dinners and people over,” he continued. “They are amazing. I have learned so much from watching both of them. Just how to be a pro, you know? I was so impressed. They are always on time, they know all the words, they are very thoughtful about how they work and they really wanted to create a family… So much of it is how you are with people. You create a community, you create a family, you create a group. And both of them, they go on camera, they are movie stars. They are fantastic in the movie.”

Eternals centers on a new group of Marvel heroes — an immortal alien race who secretly lives on Earth to keep it safe. The star-studded cast also includes Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kit Harrington, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Lia McHugh and Don Lee.

“I am so, so pumped. I am so excited. The movie is absolutely amazing. The movie is so, so good. I can’t wait for everybody to see it,” he expressed, adding, “The scale of it, it is so big, it is so epic. It spans thousands of years, it is all over the world, like truly, it is a global movie. It is very international. We go all over the world, so it’s really like the scale of it. It is one of the biggest movies I have ever seen.”

The actor admits that becoming a superhero has been “a dream of mine for a few years.” “I really want to be a superhero in a Marvel movie, and then I was like, ‘How do I do it?’” he recalled. “And then I just got very lucky.”

[From Entertainment Tonight]

We’ve had low-key stories over the years about how Angelina is well-loved by costars, especially her younger costars. I actually didn’t know that Angelina was the kind of person who just hangs out on set instead of going back to her trailer. I wonder if that was specific to this movie though, and working with Chloe Zhao. Angelina is a director too, and I bet she wanted to see how Chloe worked, and how a big Marvel movie worked as well. Anyway, this cast really seemed to have the best time working together. The Eternals 2??

Kumail Nanjiani arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Sony Pictures' 'Spider-Man Far From Home' held at the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX on June 26, 2019 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.