Kumail Nanjiani doesn’t love all the attention his extremely muscular physique has gotten him over the last year, but he also said that he made this big change intentionally to get Hollywood to start seeing people who look like him in a different light.
In a new profile for GQ, when asked if he’s tired yet of talking about his body, he says, “Sure,” before adding, “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.” His wife, Emily V. Gordon, compares it to “almost like being a young woman and having your breasts develop. You become aware at some point that you are being viewed differently by everyone.”
But drastically changing his musculature in this way was something the comedian felt compelled to do in order to shake up both how the industry saw him, as well as all people who look like him. He says, “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 later adds that he posted that first shirtless Instagram after all that hardcore training because, “I wanted different types of opportunities. I wanted the industry to see me differently.” He continues, “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.” But with that Instagram post, he explains, “I shared that 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.”
However, he adds that he’s also worried about perpetuating this very limited idea of what masculinity looks like. “It is aggression,” he says. “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.”
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