Most romantic comedies are selling a fantasy: flowers, Champagne, weddings that cost more than the budget of your average indie film. But The Big Sick, a rom-com that takes a long detour into random disaster, grounds itself in reality from the very first scene, when an emcee calls a young comedian named Kumail Nanjiani to the stage. The Silicon Valley star, playing a loose version of himself, dramatizes the decade-old period when he met his wife the films co-writer Emily V. Gordon. They fell in love, dated and broke up because he wasnt ready to introduce his his white girlfriend to his observant Pakistani Muslim parents. That mightve been the end of the romance if Gordon hadnt wound up comatose in the hospital with a mysterious illness.
Much like Nanjianis stand-up and his popular Twitter account, The Big Sick has a sweet, sincere sense of humor yet still manages to find dark comedy in Gordons harrowing ordeal without trivializing her near-death experience. In one scene, where Emily (played by Zoe Kazan) is unconscious, Kumail apologizes as he uses her limp thumb to unlock her cellphone and call her parents. Later, he and Gordons mom (Holly Hunter) bond after a chilly introduction by stress-eating junk food on a sleepless night. Characters cry, messily and often. And it doesnt downplay the Nanjianis own cultural-clash conflicts with his family, from his parents many attempts to ensnare him in an arranged marriage to their initial resistance to his life choices.
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Its strange for them to see a piece of their lives on screen for everyone to see, but theyre excited about it, he says. I walked them through the whole movie before we shot it, so there werent any surprises for them. I think the surprise for them is, its a movie that has their son in it.
We sat down with Nanjiani in New York to discuss his collaboration with Gordon (as well as a few of modern comedys sharpest minds), the obligation they felt to defy romantic comedy clichs and why its important to talk politics in 2017.
The Big Sick has been doing the festival circuit for a few months now. What has it been like, watching audiences respond to such a personal film?
Thats my favorite part. When youre doing promotion, its easy to get disconnected from the thing youre promoting. So watching the movie with a crowd and seeing people connect to it is the thing that keeps me connected to the movie. People will come up and show Emily their surgery scars. We get people in multicultural relationships, or first- and second-generation immigrants, telling us stories that are similar to ours. The theme of disappointing your parents is something everybody knows. Everybody knows someone who was sick.
Speaking of Emily, how did you two approach co-writing the scenes that take place when her character is in a coma. Did you have to fill her in on everything she missed?
I dont think it occurred to her until we started writing: Oh, right, you guys were there the whole time, and I was in a coma. What did you do? What were those days like? And I didnt realize that she didnt realize what had happened during those days. There were a lot of memories I hadnt talked about and now I was talking about them with the person we were at the hospital for. I also didnt know what her days were like once she was up and conscious. I would visit and leave, but I didnt know that every hour someone would come and take her blood. Or that she felt she had no privacy. Or that she watched all six seasons of Andy Barker, P.I. So it was interesting to really, really dig in to sift through our experiences and explain them to each other.
You collaborated on the film with two very distinctive comedic voices, producer Judd Apatow and director Michael Showalter. What did they bring to the story?
Judds whole thing is that stories should be messy and emotionally complicated, and that every persons point of view should make sense. For him, the comedy comes last. Hes like, Youve go to have the characters fleshed out, and there cant always be clean resolutions. There should be arguments where the disagreement isnt resolved, it just kind of ends.
Mike has this weird mix of a comedy mindset because hes done so much strange, singular comedy, like The State and a strong sense of story and emotionality. Hes a very emotional guy. Nobody else that I can think of has that particular combination.
Did you always have Ray Romano and Holly Hunter in mind to play Emilys parents?
That was Judd. We decided to cast the mom first because shes the parent my character has more conflict with, and we needed the right person for it. Judd had seen Holly teach an acting class that year, so he was like, It should be Holly Hunter. We had to convince her, because shes a legend and it had been awhile since shed done a comedy. Once she came on, Judd had the idea that Ray should be Emilys father, because theyre so different. They look so interesting together, and they have such different energies.
Most romantic comedy have a moment where the couple says I love you; Emily and Kumail tell each other, I am overwhelmed by you. How did that come about?
We did a lot of emotional improv, and that scene came out of something Zoe and I did together. She said, I am overwhelmed by you, and I was like, I dont know what to say, so I just repeated it back to her. We knew the scene was about one person opening up and the other person not being able to reciprocate. I loved that moment because it was so weird: Its not like the other person doesnt say I love you its that the other person says it exactly the same way. After we did that, we were like, Wow, that felt so strange.
We had seen a lot of bad romantic comedies, and what we found they all had in common was a lack of specificity. They felt generic because they felt like everybodys conception of love, where really it should be about these characters perception of love. And then people watching it connect their own perception of love to it. So we knew that we wanted the way these two people are getting to know each other and opening up to each other to feel specific.
Do the movies stand-up scenes draw on your real early material?
Yeah, the rule was that I only did material from around that point in my life, except at the end, where the stand-up I do was written for the movie. The early stuff was tricky because I had to perform the way I was performing then: I would leave the mic in the stand, I was pretty tentative on stage. This guy is not as experienced at stand-up as I am now. And it was tough, because I was performing for a real crowd of extras you couldve done actual material and done well. But the point isnt that Im doing well; its also not that Im not doing well. We present the stand-up as it really was. Its up to the audience to decide if its good or not.
The point is not, This guys gonna be a star.
That never works. There are so many movies about comedy where theyre like, Wow, that was a genius set. And youre watching it, thinking, Thats a genius set?
People arent communicating its just yelling. Im guilty of it, too. But I think empathy is extremely important. If you dont have it, everything falls apart.
Silicon Valley is just finishing its fourth season, and its been a big one for your character. Has it been fun watching Dinesh come into his own, however awkwardly?
I love it. Thats the advantage of playing a person for four seasons. In the beginning, youre trying to figure out who the guy is, then youre trying to put him in different situations, to see what this guy would do with romantic success or business success or whatever it is. I love to keep exploring and find different sides of Dinesh.
T.J. Miller is leaving the show next season. What do you think Pied Piper will look like without its resident buffoon, Ehrlich Bachman?
The chemistry of the shows gonna change. But I think itll still be good, because the rest of the cast is so good, and the writing staff theyre geniuses. Ehrlich Bachman is such a great character, and Im gonna miss working with T.J. But maybe this is an opportunity for the show to change, four seasons in. And that is exciting.
Youre a pretty prolific presence on Twitter, and your feed tends to mix comedy with your thoughts on politics, religion and racial justice. Do you feel a responsibility, at a time when Islamophobia is so rampant, to be a voice for Muslim Americans in particular?
I dont think I feel a responsibility. I just do it because its whats on my mind. Thats what my Twitter has always been. It used to be video games and movies and stupid jokes. Now, I because its all I can think about.
Do you envision your work getting more political, too?
I dont know. With my comedy and acting, I just want to tell good stories and do stuff that I can connect with. So if I did more political stuff, it wouldnt be because I felt like I needed to do political stuff. It would be because it was just where my head was at. But now, when I see work that doesnt engage with whats going on in the world, whether directly or indirectly, it feels pointless. To me, even the success of Wonder Woman is important. Thats a female superhero with a female director. We dont see that. So when you go see it, youre standing for something. And I feel like people want to engage with stuff that stands for something. I dont think people want completely escapist stuff right now.
Were not living in the era of Gossip Girl anymore.
Yeah. If one bad thing happens, then people seek escapism because they want to forget that one bad thing that happened. But when its not one event, its your whole life then something that doesnt engage with your reality feels so frivolous.
You recently gave a graduation speech at your alma mater, Grinnell, where you urged the graduates to populate your life with people different from you. Why was that such an important message for you to send to kids who were just starting out in life?
Were in such a strange situation now, because there are different political sides, and they dont talk to each other. They shout at each other on Twitter. Ill be talking to someone and suddenly theyll start accusing me of stuff, and Im like, Thats not me, I didnt say that. Youve projected this whole set of adjectives or beliefs on me. People are not really communicating its just yelling. Im certainly guilty of it, too. But I think empathy is extremely important in society, and if you dont have it, everything falls apart. If theres an answer to all of this, it has to be empathy.
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