Showing posts with label Kumail Nanjiani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kumail Nanjiani. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 7, 2024






Speaking on the Inside of You podcast, Nanjiani said Eternals made him realise he was approaching his acting career in the wrong way, by being too focused on other people's response instead of his own experience.

"I realised that the way I was evaluating what I wanted to do and what I didn't want to do was all completely messed up," Nanjiani said. "I was looking at like, 'Okay, if I do this, this movie's going to come out in theatres, it's going to be a big hit, and I'll get more.'

"Then I realised... I did stuff that should've been a home run and then it wasn't, like Eternals. It was an Oscar winning director, one of the craziest casts. You had legends, you had Salma Hayek, you had Angelina Jolie, you had new people who were amazing, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, who have both been nominated for Oscars."

"However, when that movie came out and the reviews weren't good, that was very, very tough for me," he said. "I realised that too much of how I'm evaluating what I want to do is based on the result or what other people think of it."

"It was really, really hard, because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed," he said. "They lifted the embargo really early, and they also put it in some fancy movie festivals, and they sent us on a big global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo was lifted."

Nanjiani continued: "It was really, really hard and that's when I was like, 'This is unfair to me. It's unfair to [my wife] Emily. I can't approach my work this way anymore, some s**t's gotta change.' So very intentionally I did start counselling.

"I still talk to my therapist about that. Emily says that I do have trauma from it. Emily and I just got dinner with someone else from that movie and we were like, 'Man, that was tough wasn't it.' He's like, 'Yeah that was really tough.'

"I think we all went through something kind of similar, and this guy that I'm talking about is truly one of the best actors of our generations and has been nominated for an Oscar since then. So I realised I can't be so results based in my work anymore cause I can't really control it. I can control my experience. I can control how I am to the people around me. I can control what I learn from it. I can control how I work. I can't control what people are going to think of it."



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Thursday, November 11, 2021



Q: Who do you think would win in battle, Thena or Maleficent?

A: "I think they'd get along really well. The thing is Thena likes to fight. I'm not sure Maleficent does. Maleficent is looking for peace.  Thena's just completely...Or maybe they both are.   God, like I'm in therapy now.  Which one am I?  And what makes them similar is probably the answer to my psychological make-up.  Yeah, Impossible, impossible to think about.  I'd like the fans to tell me actually. You always want to hear from the fans on what they'd like to see.
Or who they'd like to see us come in contact with in the MCU now that we're in it.  I'm very curious who they want us to. I think Kingo and Thena haven't had enough play.  Because we were saying one of us is very physical, one is very verbal, one of us is an extrovert, one of us is a bit of an introvert.  We're kind of perfect opposites."
K:  I think we would make a really good pairing.  And I'm so glad you said that to Kevin at the after party for the premiere. You were like 'What about the two of us?'
A:  "Yeah, we'd be so good."
Q:  I couldn't agree more
A;  "We're pushing."

Q: Would you ever return to that character (Maleficent)?

A: "I love playing Maleficent.  She's like my alter-ego."
K:  I've seen Sleeping Beauty so many hundreds of times, over and over and over and really was in love with Maleficent.
A: "I didn't ruin her for you."
K:  No! It was great seeing another side.  I'm such a fan of that character so I was thrilled.  We actually went to, I don't know if you remember this, when Maleficent 2 premiered in London while we were shooting, and Emily and I went to see it.  
A:  "I love that.  So if there's another one you're gonna have to, somehow we're gonna have to play."
K:  Yeah!


Her answers lend credence to the earlier report that Disney is actively developing Maleficent 3.  The site's other scoop that Angelina "signed a massive contract with Marvel" was an exaggeration of a standard agreement for talent to be available for future films that Salma Hayek also signed.  As to the 2nd part of the story, "that studio head Kevin Feige wants her to have a solo film as well," she has already said she is not interested in a solo film without her eternals family.  Kumail would be a great addition to M3.  He opens up a lot of possibilities for both the plot and tone of the story.  Hopefully this time with a competent director.


Eternals :  52 Metacritic, 47% of 340 RT critics, 80% of 5+K RT audience, 6.9 from 87K IMDb user ratings, B Cinemascore

Maleficent :  56 Metacritic, 54% of 275 RT critics, 70% of 100+K RT audience, 7 from 360K IMDb user ratings, A Cinemascore, $758M global box office.

MMoE :  43 Metacritic, 39% of 256 RT critics,  95% of 10+K RT audience, 6.6 from 95K IMDb user ratings, A Cinemascore, $492M global box office.













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Thursday, January 23, 2020

Marvel has released a poster for Eternals in honor of Lunar New Year, which falls on January 25. While the artwork does not show the entire team, it does offer a glimpse at four characters' costumes as they fly into the sky. Based on the previously shown concept art, it looks like the four characters shown are Thena (Jolie), Ikaris, Ajak (Salma Hayek), and Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). (screen rant)


EW
Kumail Nanjiani says The Eternals is 'the most sci-fi of all the Marvel movies'
By Dan Snierson January 23, 2020 at 05:16 PM EST

Kumail Nanjiani is used to getting laughs, but he has also been getting gasps lately. The actor and comedian recently fried the Internet’s collective grid when he Instagrammed a photo of his newly high-def physique, which will be put to good use in the upcoming Marvel movie The Eternals.
What was his reaction to the reaction? “I really did not think it was going to get as big as it did,” Nanjiani, 41, tells EW. “I really was very surprised. I’d been shooting for a few months. I was in good shape. Christmas was coming and I was like, ‘I should take some pictures, because who knows how I’m going to look after Christmas?’ So I put those pictures up while I was shooting, and then I checked an hour later and there was some stuff and I was like, ‘Okay, good.’ Suddenly it started exploding, and it was just snowballing. Each time I looked, it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it was like this thing that was going out of my control. I remember at one point looking at Twitter, scrolling down, and just seeing my own naked torso over and over and over. I could not believe how big it got. I texted my brother, I was like, ‘Hey, are Mom or Dad okay?’ Because it’s a weird thing. And my brother was like, ‘Oh, Dad sent your shirtless picture to both family WhatsApp groups.’ And I was like, ‘Okay! Thank God.’” He laughs. “To both of them.”
Nanjiani can sigh in relief when it comes to his parents’ reaction, but he does remain worried about one other shoe dropping. “I’m still terrified that someday I’m going to sneeze and it’s just all going to disappear, you know?” he deadpans. “I live in fear of it. Every morning I wake up and go, ‘Okay, thank God it’s not today.’ Because it’s just so much work.”
It’s work, yes, but it’s also a fantasy come to life for this hardcore sci-fi/superhero fan. Now that Nanjiani has been on the inside of the one of 2020’s most high-profile (and most mysterious) superhero movies, what surprised him the most? “My super-suit is very, very comfortable actually, even though it’s very elaborate,” he notes. “But the other thing is, making this massive movie in many important ways still feels like you’re making an independent movie, in the sense that it really feels like a family and it feels like it’s really about characters and relationships and very small moments. So while you have certain scenes where you’re hanging up on a wire fighting bad guys and you have all these superpowers, the rest of it does feel like you’re making something really small. The people who are making it are very very passionate about it and the conversations you have are the [same] conversations when you create anything: ‘Does this make sense? Should we do this?’ Chloe [Zhao], our director, and Nate [Moore], our producer, and Kevin [Feige, Marvel Studios president] — they’ve been just so open to everything and so passionate. I mean, they’ve made 25 of these movies and it still feels like they’re living their dreams every day, which is certainly what I’ve been doing for the last six months.”
What sets apart The Eternals — which is based on Jack Kirby’s trippy comic series — from previous Marvel action-adventures? “It’s really, really an epic,” Nanjiani says. “And it’s really such a science-fiction story. It’s a superhero story, but in some ways, it’s the most sci-fi of all the Marvel movies and it’s the most epic of all the Marvel movies. And the story spans thousands of years. So it’s really not like any of the other Marvel movies.”
And it’s one that seemed almost custom-tailored to his specific tastes. “I love superhero movies, but beyond that, this is exactly the type of movie that I love,” he testifies. “If someone would say, ‘All right, what kind of movie do you want to watch? What are the things that’s going to have?’ I would say all these things. And that’s what this movie is. It really spans thousands and thousands of years. And the story is just so big and so epic. And I don’t mean epic in the internet way, I mean epic in the old-school way…It doesn’t look like any of the other Marvel movies. I was on set shooting, and the director showed me just a still of all of us together in the scene. And I was like, ‘I mean, look at all of us together.’ We all look so different. It’s me and a huge buff guy from Korea [Ma Dong-seok] and Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie and Gemma Chan and Lauren Ridloff. You don’t ever get to see people like this together in the same room, let alone in awesome superhero costumes.”
It won’t be an eternity, but you won’t see this team (which also includes Richard Madden, Kit Harington, Barry Keoghan, and Brian Tyree Henry) in action until Nov. 6. You can catch Nanjiani before that on the big screen with Issa Rae in the romantic comedy The Lovebirds, out in April. He’s also busy with other projects, including voicing none other than Jesus on Fox animated comedy Bless The Hearts, and exec-producing the recently greenlighted season 2 of Little America. For much more from Nanjiani on why he wanted to share these immigrant stories of the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ anthology series that he co-created, head over here.
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Friday, December 20, 2019







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Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Dec. 11, Wednesday

Probably a party at Salma's house.  Her invitees included her Eternals cast mates and director and fellow Mexican Alfonso Cuaron.






















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