Podcrushed - Kumail Nanjiani

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Comedian and actor Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals, Silicon Valley) joins the crew to discuss his latest comedy special, 'Night Thoughts.' Kumail reminisces about his early childhood in Karachi, Pakistan, dealing with bullying, and the journey to self-acceptance. He shares candid insights into his creative process, the role of his wife Emily in his work, and the challenges of returning to standup comedy after a long hiatus.    Podcrushed listeners can grab Rosetta Stone’s LIFETIME Membership for 50% OFF! Visit https://www.rosettastone.com/podcrushed today to get started.   Go to https://www.airalo.com and use code PODCRUSHED for 15% off your first eSIM. Terms apply.  Make changing time easier for you and your little one… order Magnetic Me today! New customers get 15% off your first order when you go to https://www.MagneticMe.com   🎧 Want more from Podcrushed? 📸 Instagram 🎵 TikTok 🐦 X / Twitter ✨ Follow Penn, Sophie & Nava Instagram Penn Sophie Nava TikTok Penn Sophie Nava  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada Yeah, I remember seeing that, you know that's in the Krofford commercial where it was like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi or one of those? I remember being like, I am such a sinner. I am not. Welcome to Pod Crushed. We're hosts. I'm Penn. I'm Sophie and I'm Nava, and I think we would have been your middle school besties.

avoiding slow dances together Hello and welcome to Pod Crushed Hello I'm out of breath because I just had to I just had to walk my dog My very old dog He's definitely getting old guys He's like borderline incontinent right now

Poor thing It's not It's not great news for anybody who loves dogs Which isn't me moving on our guest today has a comedy special called night thoughts so i'm curious what let's just hit me some of your guys night thoughts like the ones that keep you up there's this thing between david and i where like at night i will become super hyper right when he's trying to fall asleep and have a million questions for him like a dog or a child yes and i'm like asking him the questions

and like waking him up and shaking him. He's like, please, I does want to sleep. You really wake him up. We need to bring David on to hear what his night thoughts are in response to him. You know, he's supposed to tell me. His night thoughts are regret. Constantly, I'm wanting to know from him, like, who would you marry when I die? Like, if I died prematurely, who would you want to view it?

Like, out of the people we know. Socio-past. He's never answered. Good for David. David had never. PSA David never this is a trap There is no correct answer I am so upset

I'm like it's not a trap I'm just curious I just want to know When he answers It'll become a trap You'll never look at that woman The same No trap

I'll start naming people for him He's like I'm not answering this question I think you could have a good marriage Sophie you are way less sane than I thought you were That is That is legitimately bonkers that you would wake him up to ask such a

I am angry for men I am becoming a men's rights activist as of right now Sophie radicalized to Penn I it's official men are victims oh my God I cannot believe that

that is just well what are your night though mine is going to be such a let down after Sophie's but the other night a few like maybe five nights ago I was like cuddling Louis and I was thinking

I wish he could talk to me I was like if I could have any dream come true it would be for Louis to talk to me and then and then I of course I can make anything sad so then I was thinking well if he did talk I would be you couldn't get over it when he died like it would be like actually losing a child

and then I started thinking about all the moms I know who've lost children so then I fell asleep very sad but in my dream Louis talked to that night I had a dream and Louis was talking to me but the saddest part is when I woke up I couldn't remember what his voice sounded like

or what he said to me and I often think about what would Louis voice sound like it's like the face of God you know you can't yeah so I'm powerful I know that I experienced it but I can't remember and then so a couple nights after that like this was literally like five days ago so the next two nights I tried to make myself

think about Louis talking so I could dream but it didn't happen didn't work out that way it was a one time thing oh wow both of yours are so cute I mean, Sophie's is crazy, but it's in, like, a cute way. I guess. I guess. They seem relatively innocent.

Mine is, so to be fair, if it's, like, about thoughts that you have as you're going to sleep, mine are all about, like, keep this effing child to sleep as long as he will, because he wakes up so early, my five-year-old. So right now, the way that we have it, my wife, Dom sleeps with the twins. I sleep with a five-year-old. it's like it's just the only way that things are working and so I am my goal is to get him in bed like this kid needs if he doesn't get 10 hours of sleep

which you know it's kind of hard to nail oh my god he can be a maniac when he makes up he's like Sophie just waking me up asking me questions like if I die what kind of child would you like to have daddy Which child would you raise in? And he actually is rage baiting me. He actually is just waiting for me to say anything. And he's like, no, why did you say that?

I don't have a tantrum. I'm going to be like, and then I'll... Why did you say that? Why are you standing there talking? It's like because you are talking to me right now. They're so irrational. The difference between him and Sophie is that he's five. I'm like toddlers.

They're so irrational. Yeah. You know who has some grade A Hulu level. Disney paid night thoughts is our guest, Kumail Nanjani. You might either know him from his days of stand-up over a decade ago, pushing on, I suppose two decades ago. You might know him when he really had his glow-up as a writer and a star of the Big Sick,

which he co-wrote with his wife and was nominated for an Oscar, you might know him from Stint in the Marvel universe, you might know him from Silicon Valley, you might know him from... Welcome to Chippendales, Pokerface. That's right.

Only murder's in the building. He's in everything. Oh, my goodness. What you now will know him from is his new stand-up special, the first one in sounds like 10 years. Night Thoughts, which is available on Hulu, just as much as we want you to stick around for this episode.

We also want you to leave in your comments. Just give us some night thoughts, you know? That's a good one. Content King. I heard you called Content King on another podcast. I thought, that's great. He is content King. That is rich.

I'm going to wake up dating with that one. No, I loved it. Hey there. It's Julia Louis Dreyfus. I'm back with a new season of Wiser Than Me, the show where I sit down with remarkable older women and soak up their stories, their humor, and their hard-earned wisdom. Every conversation leaves me a little smarter and definitely more inspired. And yes, I'm still calling my 91-year-old mom, Judy, to get her take on it all. Wiser than me from Lemonada Media premieres November 20. It's 12th, wherever you get your podcasts. It's morning in New York. Oh, God. Hey, everybody. I'm Mandy Patinkin. And I'm Catherine Grady.

And we have a new podcast. It's called Don't Listen to Us. Many of you've asked for our advice. Tell me, what is wrong with you people? Don't listen to us. Our Take It or Leave It Advice show is, out every Wednesday, premiering October 15th, a Lemonada Media Original. Give us a snapshot of life for you at 12.

So this is what happened around 11 or 12, maybe even earlier, slightly earlier, but this is a big moment. My cousin, who was much older than me, I was visiting him, and he lived in another country, and he closed the door, and he came, and he came, and he was. sat across from me and he was like, so do you know what fucking is? And I was like, no, I have no idea. What are you talking about? And so he explains in great detail. I don't know why I wasn't particularly close with this cousin. He was just for some reason. He was like two or three years older than me, which at that age is so much older.

Yeah. For some reason, he could not wait to explain to me in great detail what fucking was. Was he right? Like, did he get all the points, right? He was very accurate. I knew something was up, you know, like not to get too dirty, but I knew that there was too much infrastructure down there for just, like, what I was using it for. Right, right, right.

Like, I knew there was more to it. That's a good way to put it, yeah. And I had before that, I'm sorry, you started at 12. You told me to do this 12. No, this is our fault. We take responsibility. I had noticed already, I don't know, I was like, whenever I look at a poster of the movie Beastmaster, something strange starts

happening. And I was like, I feel like this is a major discovery I've made. And when I grow up, I'm going to become a scientist and find out why this is happening. You come to the world and be like, for whatever reason, whenever I see, I was a big fan of like fantasy movies. I was like, whenever I watch fantasy movies, there's a physical change that occurs. And I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but for me, it's like really one-to-one. Like, it's 100% of the time.

I remember having the same thoughts. That's so funny. Yeah. I watched Beast Master recently, and I'll tell you, it's still a perfect batting record on that movie. In regards to this. And so I'm turning red. I know it's hard to tell with my skin color.

And so he explained it to me in great detail. And then I had another cousin who was like, I was like, hey, this other cousin told me this thing. And this cousin was a couple years younger than me. And he was like, oh, so we should both, what we're going to do is. And he told me, my older cousin told me how to masturbate. And so me and my cousin were hanging out. And he was like, okay, we're both going to do this.

I'm going to go into the bathroom first and then do it. And then you're going to go in and you're going to do it. Is this within the scope of this podcast? At least what? I thought you were going to say you went in together. I was going to say. No, no, no, no. I want to clarify, you know, like, there was nothing inappropriate with any of these cousins.

Like, when my cousin told me that, there was truly nothing about it that was, it was only weird in the way. It wasn't creepy. It wasn't. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I would say it wasn't, I would say it wasn't intentionally creepy. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a lot of information to lay on a 12-year-old, like from going to. From knowing nothing to like knowing all that is a lot.

And so I talk about this a little bit in my stand-up, but I remember my cousin went in and he was in there for like five minutes. He came out and his face was red. And I asked him, how was it? And his mouth moved, but no sound came out. And then I remember he had a BB gun and he went out and he shot a crow. I was like, no. I know, that's another horrible, horrible memory.

The apex of masculinity. It was a horrible memory. And, you know, this cousin, who I'm still very close with all my cousins, he always loved, like, BB guns, and he loved, like, learning to drive. And at this age, for me, for a long, I never felt like, this is a whole other thing. I never felt like I was manly enough, you know, and I sort of knew that about myself, and I didn't like that about myself. Anyway, I went.

went in and I, oh, God, guys, this is too much detail. It was like, it was so quick. It was like my body had been waiting like, what took so fucking long, you know? And so that summer really became like, I remember thinking out loud to myself like, oh, this is going to be a problem. And it was, you know, so that summer was really all about that.

But the weird thing about it is, you know, I had a very conservative Muslim upbringing. I was taught that even being attracted to a woman was a sin, you know, not just acting on it, but that if you think, if you look at a woman and you get, like, impure thoughts, that's a sin in itself. And so I started feeling like I was a bad person because I was having these feelings. Yeah, and earlier probably, right? I mean, you were having those feelings not just 12, like it's, right? Yeah, I remember seeing that, you know, that Cindy Crawford commercial where it was like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi or one of those?

Vaguely, yeah. I do know what you're talking about. Yeah, I vaguely think I do. I remember being like, I am such a sinner. I am not. And so it was this like, it became this constant cycle of not being able to stop myself from doing it and then feeling intense shame right now. Like immediate, like, going from, like, you know, ecstasy to extreme, I would, not depression. I'm fortunate I've never had to deal with that, but, like, extreme guilt and feeling like I'm a bad person.

And now when I look back, I feel so sorry for that guy. Because, you know, I'm 12. And I'm fighting against, like, the very force that's led to the survival of our species. You know, it's so unfair to have, like, a little kid. You can't win that battle. No, I didn't. I lost that battle multiple times a day. Multiple times a day.

And so, yeah, oh my God. And so that sort of cycle really played in my head over and over and over and over. And it really wasn't until like sort of a few years. If I'm 47 now, I was into my 30s when I realized like, oh, I have always thought of myself at my core. as a bad person who's pretending to be good and it goes back to that period because I was having these feelings. I was taught that those feelings meant there was something wrong with me. And so it wasn't until sort of fairly recently that I was like, and it's through therapy and all that being like, no, I'm a good person. But it's a, it's a struggle that's still part of me. Other than that,

which is a huge thing, my sort of, those years, 12 to 15, 16 were really, really great. I really had my families, we have a big, very, like, connected family. I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan,

which is sort of like, I think now it's like over 20 million people. It's like very much like the New York of Pakistan. It's the concrete jungle, people everywhere, it's loud, you know. It's like a very exciting city. It's also, in many, ways a dangerous city but it was really it's a really exciting place to grow up and had an extended

family and we all went out to dinner every Friday like this huge 25 30 you know we get a massive table and I love my family and I have a very fun very loud family so so that stuff was all was all really good really fun I was obsessed with movies and video games so in that period I was I would once a week I'd go to the video store get like seven VHS watch a movie every single day. I wasn't really like a going outside kid very much. Like I wasn't like hyper-social. I really wasn't.

And that's kind of what I did. I played video games, I watched movies. I was very good at school. I studied all the time because I was like, at that age, I realized like, okay, I felt I had not much going for me. I was like, I'm not good at sports, girls are interested in me, all I really

have is I can work hard and get good grades. So that was sort of my identity at that point was oh, I'm the guy who gets good grades. And I studied more than anybody I knew. I studied, I studied a lot. I played video games and watched movies. And that was sort of my life from about, you know, 12 to 15 or 16. And I really, really, I really loved it. I'm curious of this, this picture that you painted, Camille, 12 years old, masturbating all the time. All the time. And I want to know, like, what were the conversations? Were you able to keep that to yourself?

Like, did your parents ever find out? Were there any conversations between you and them about, like, your body, your sexual impulses, sex, girls? Did you go back to your cousin and say, what have you done? No. Are you joking, bringing up sex to my parents? What did they have? bring it up to you?

No. We haven't talked about it. We never talked about it. We were not talked about it in school. We do not talk about it. It's so, it's the contrast between my parents' relationship with all this stuff and my wife, Emily's relation. She grew up in North Carolina and her family is, I think, um, uh, sort of very open in a way

that's fairly rare too. So they would call it, they would call sex rapping Christmas presents. So, like, when we started visiting her in North Carolina... It could be a little bit confusing. Yeah, if anything, stuff is getting unwrapped. And so when we would visit them around Christmas, when Emily and I were just, like, going to our room in the basement, they'd be like, are you guys going to wrap Christmas presents? I'm like, I do not want to have this interaction with you. Like, they, I think, enjoyed how uncomfortable I was with this, you know?

Oh, my God. Oh, they would swear in front of each other, which was so different. Like, my family does not swear. I was at a family wedding last year, and I said, fucking friend of my mom, I'm in my 40s. And she was like, why would you say that? Why would you say that to me? I was being funny.

And I didn't even think of it as like a big thing. But I was like, oh, clearly we haven't like, we were still, like, that's still the line that I cannot cross with them. So, no, not at all. obviously I think they knew and oh I did this thing again I've talked about this in my stand-up where I had two VCRs

and you know you could I don't know I might be older than you guys I don't know but you could like record movies like you could hook them up and make copies of VHSs so I started doing I got so obsessed with it and I would feel bad but I got obsessed with it I would get like porn tapes from

friend and I had all these movies you know I was a big movie fan and I would record scenes in the middle of the movies I had so like I've never actually seen right to bury it yeah to bury it I've never seen the movie enemy mine but I still haven't seen it many times but I've yeah but I've seen I know yeah there's like a little moment right before the good stuff starts that I've seen yeah it's high tech. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, I mean, just because I needed to protect myself so much so when my parents were out of the house,

you know, it was I would have to like record this and I would have to record it before I masturbated because once I knew that once I masturbated, I wouldn't want to do it because I felt like there were two versions of me. There was the version of me that was into this stuff and the version

of me that hated the version of me that was into this stuff, you know? Wow, yeah. So it was a lot of what a lot of, I think for all of us, you know, when you're going through puberty, it's such a uncontrollable thing. What were your experiences around actual, like, crushes and love and heartbreak with other people? With other people? Thank you very. I really like this girl in, I think it was the fifth grade. or the sixth grade, I won't say her name,

but I really like this girl. And, you know, the way our school worked was you'd get a rank at the end of the year. Like I said, grades were very important to me. So you don't just get like a GP or whatever. It's like you're first in class, your second in class, whatever. And she was always first, and I was always second. And I was completely taken with this girl.

And I don't know how, but somehow my family figured out It was my cousin, a different cousin's dad who's like this lovely, lovely man. Actually, oh, there's so much here. Anyway, he sort of, I don't know how he found out that I had a crush on this girl and he would tease me about her all the time. Like, he was more, he was a little more, like, open with this stuff than my family was. My family would never talk about this, but he would be like, oh, how's that girl? How's she doing?

How are her grades? I don't know how he figured out that I, like, really, really like this girl. but I remember when I was a kid when I was around that age I guess this is around 12 earlier I really wanted to be like I loved comic books I really wanted to be an artist like that's what I wanted to do but I wanted to be a cartoonist but I was very very bad at drawing I just could not do it and I remember very specifically

there was one assignment where we had to draw a hand so I was drawing my left hand you know with my right hand looking at it and I just could not get it right It was awful, and I was erasing, and I was doing it again. I was erasing and doing it again in art class. And it just got worse and worse, and you could see where I had erased it. It looked like an alien. It was horrible.

And I remember I finally was like, it was towards the end of class. I can't get it any better. And I thought this is the best I could get it. And I took it up to my art teacher in front of class. This girl was there. I do wonder what she's up to. she had her drawing and I went and I showed my drawing

and both the teacher and her started laughing at it and they were not being cruel the art teacher really liked me and she felt really bad for laughing I do not blame them they were not making fun of me

they just both laughed and I was like all right two dreams just died I'll never be an artist and I'll never be her husband and that truly was when I was like, okay, I can't, I'm not going to be an artist. I can't do it. And so that I remember being very, like, very devastating too. It's so sad. It's like you, I can think of back to

moments like that in my own childhood around like achievement. And it's those tiny moments where for a child, it's so fragile. Like you had this dream. And of course, if you really wanted to do it, you could, you know, it didn't come down to that one hand. you could have done it, but... Which means you couldn't have done it. I do want to dispute you on that. I don't think I could have done it. You don't think I don't got it, you know?

Like, I know now I'm comfortable with the things I'm good at, the things I'm not good at. And drawing art is just something I don't, I never, because the amount of time I put into it, I would draw all the time and I never got, I never got any good at it. At that age, often we find, you know, for instance, at 12, I moved to L.A. and started acting and I was professional at that at that age. So, you know, we do find that at 12, there's at least the beginning stirrings of if this is somebody who's become a performing artist, a writer, you know, a creative professional later in life, usually there is something on the horizon there at least. Did you have a sense that was writing? Because it seems to me like you're a writer. You know, I mean, yes, there is much else that then blossoms from that, and you do other things, but you're like you're kind of a writer at heart. I mean, it seems like you said that.

What was your relationship to writing at this point? I do, it's true, I do consider myself primarily a writer and everything else comes from that. And I do love acting. I love all of it. But the reason I started stand-up was I was like, I'm a writer and I don't know how to get my writing up there. And this is the most efficient way I can do it. I did not think of myself as a writer then because it just felt like, you know,

movies were made by gods from another land. It did not feel like a real possibility at all. So anybody who knew me until, you know, I was 18 is very surprised that I'd do this because I didn't have any... I was sort of trying to write in secret. I remember trying to write like a fantasy novel in secret, but then being embarrassed that I was trying to do it,

didn't get very far. But I know I knew that I liked that stuff, but I never thought I would be able to do it because it just didn't feel like a possible... I'm not from a family that's really artsy in any kind of way, you know? You have mentioned before that comedy helps, I think, draw people to bigger or more significant issues.

And I'm curious what movies, while you were growing up, really helped draw you to issues that you found important or were, like, really formative for you? Well, I mean, I don't... know if movies drew me to like, you know, issues that were important, but I loved, like I said, I loved...

They drew you more to climax, maybe? Yeah. Kroll, Beastmaster, Conan, the Barbarian. I mean, any of these movies. Total recall. I mean, you know, the girl with the three breasts, do you remember that?

That, like... You know, wow, I have heard about this. I'm not remembering that. I've ever seen Total Recall. Isn't that crazy? I think it's a great movie. I haven't seen it a long time, but when I saw it as a kid, it blew my mind on many different levels. Three? Yeah. I was like, oh, wow.

The possibilities are endless. I have so much to learn. So the movies I left, I watched a lot of Bollywood movies, like Indian movies. My parents and I would watch one every weekend or two every weekend. But, you know, the Hollywood movies I liked were sort of the ones

everybody liked. Ghostbusters, obviously, watched that over and over. I remember when I first heard about Ghostbusters. I was like, wait, it has ghosts and it's funny. It's like a movie engineered for me. E.T. I watched a lot. That was the saddest. And I talked about this and stand up too, but I watched like Elephant Man too young because I thought it was a superhero movie. It's just a very sad movie. Wait, you said Ghostbusters is engineered for you because it's about ghosts and it's funny. Do you have any... What's your obsession with ghosts?

Do you have any actual ghost stories? No, I love horror movies, though. Like, I've been watching horror movies since I was a little kid. We had this weird thing. I had an uncle who was the dad of the guy who told me, like, what sex is. And we're all still very close. They used to live in Qatar. That's how we know your family tree.

Yeah. Okay, got it. Got it. Yes, yes, yes. The guy who told me what sex is the guy. He's the third brother of... Yes, exactly, exactly. All the important connections, you know.

He visited and he had made some deal with a guy in Karachi where he had smuggled like 200 VHS tapes from Qatar to Karachi and he was staying with us. He came to our house. I remember he'd hidden them inside diapers. So we had these, like, it was these stacks of like diaper bags that is VHS tapes hidden in them. And so the guy was supposed to come pick up these 200 movies,

and the guy just never showed up. So suddenly, out of nowhere, one day, I had like 200 new movies in my house. Wow. Incredible. And there were all like action movies, like the original Gone in 60 Seconds. And there were all these horror movies.

Like there was one called, I remember, there was one called Hell Night with, I think, Linda Blair. And I wasn't allowed to watch the horror movies. movies, but my parents were out of the house, and it would be like, you know, first I do the porn, and once that's done, then I watch a secret horror movie. And you feel miserable, and then you just compound it with existential dread of horror. You punish yourself. Self-harm. So I just suddenly, I fell in love with horror movies, and I was really, really afraid of the dark for too long because I was watching these movies. Like, maybe until I was, like,

13 or 14, I was afraid of the dark. Like, I remember my parents being, like, genuinely worried, like, hey, you're too old to be, like, in the middle of the night, my parents would be like, I'm also from a very late night family. Like, my family, my mom still goes to bed at 2 a.m. every day. Wow. They'll, they'll, I saw the newest mission impossible with my family on a Wednesday night and 1130 showing. Sounds like a fun family.

It's a very fun family. It's a really, it's a really, really, I genuinely have, I just did a stand-up tour. And when I was in Toronto, I have a lot of family that we went out after. And my wife, family was there. And I was just like, look how fun my family is. It's such a fun family. That's so nice, Camille. And we'll be right back.

I will never forget the time that I went to Italy to meet my sister and my best friend. And my flight was delayed out of Rome. And I missed the meeting point with everyone and didn't have a cell phone. So I couldn't tell them. So my friend and my sister waited for me for hours. hours in the airport, then finally left, and then I got locked out of the Airbnb and roamed, literally roamed the streets of Venice in the middle of the night while it was raining, like not knowing how to get in touch with anyone. It was an absolute nightmare. And after that,

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That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. visit rosettastone.com slash podcrushed to get started and claim you are 50% off today. Give a gift that keeps giving. Go to rosettastone.com slash podcrushed and start learning. It'll probably be relevant later, but I do just want to touch on the fact that in your new special you say you've said other things. And then of course, I mean, I know you drew at least some, you know, you touch on like this particular kind of relationship with parents that isn't autobiographical in the big sick but you've kind you know you just make a lot of references and then you say something about your dad in the new special that i thought um was just really telling that he got in this

major accident and and the first thing he did it sounds like the first thing he basically crawled out of the wreckage and called you yeah is that right and that i found so touching and so you know there's it's there's a lot of interesting dynamics in your family and you talk about how conservative it is on one hand but then on another it actually sounds particularly for where it's where it is like maybe quite liberal in some ways or just or maybe liberal isn't the word but it just sounds like there's it's very it's very rich and i'm curious in particular you know a boy's relationship with his father there's you know i mean that there's there's nothing like it it's a thing and i just i'm curious if you if you uh at that age if you yeah felt it sounds like you felt like you felt like you could go

to him. Yeah, I didn't go to him. I could have gone to him. You know what's interesting about my dad is like I said from the ages of like 12 to, you know, 18 or so where I felt like I wasn't like manly enough. You know, I remember specifically being like, oh, I have to learn how to walk like a man. And I remember like practicing my walk to be more manly. I knew that the way I spoke wasn't like really manly and it still really isn't. But and I think part of that is, is just being afraid of like the feminine part of me. And my dad, what I always got from my dad was a model of how it was possible to be a man who was in touch with his emotions. My dad would cry often when it was appropriate to cry, you know.

He still cries whenever he can't talk about any of my things I've done without like starting to cry. But I've watched him cry since I was a little kid. And I remember really being embarrassed by it then and being like, oh, my dad's not a real man. And then now being so grateful and also being so grateful that I had a model for how to be a man who was in touch with his emotions in that way. But I also feel bad that back then I was rejecting that, you know. And my other cousin, my cousins, my uncle would make fun of me for being in love with this, for being in love with this girl. he was a very, very soft man. And I remember my grandfather, who's my dad's dad,

sort of making fun of him for being like a soft man. And so I remember in that age, obviously the societal pressures, and, you know, Pakistan's very specific, the gender roles in Pakistan are, I don't know how it is now, but back then, they're very defined here, but they were very defined over there too back then.

And just knowing, like, oh, I cannot be the kind of, man that cries. I cannot be the kind of man who has any kind of qualities that I consider to be female. And then this shame at not being good at sports because men are good at sports, you know, that kind of stuff. And I talk in the special about how long it took me to be able to admit when I'm sad or when I'm scared. All that comes from that. And it's also like just the pressure you put on yourself. It wasn't really from specifically, my family is certainly not my dad or anything. But all that kind of stuff from 18 to

from 12 to 18 or whatever really kind of fucked me up and it took me a while to try and unravel all that because when I was a kid the other movies I really loved that I watched over and over I loved Sound of Music

and I loved Mary Poppins and I would watch those movies over and over and then going into, even into my 20s and being like, I don't like musicals. Musicals are not for men.

And then it wasn't really until a few years ago in the pandemic actually where Emily and I started watching musicals and I was like, Oh, I love this genre. Like, I love how dramatic it is and how expressive it is.

And it took me so long to come to terms with the fact that I am very sensitive. My feelings get hurt very easily. And that's just what it is. I have to be able to, like, admit that and sit in that. Like, even now, you know, I've been like pitching a movie and every rejection hits me very deeply. Which, by the way, I think it's a very masculine thing, actually, because what man is not extremely sensitive in my experience. I think that's true.

I think that's exactly right. And I think the trouble a lot of men get into is when they don't admit that, and then it turns into anger and it comes out in these sort of calcified, unproductive ways. Because I talk about, in my special, about how, you know, we're sort of taught as men that anger is the only manly emotion, sadness is weakness. Fear is weakness. Even happiness, you know, when you watch, like, sports, men watching sports,

when something good happens to go, that it turns into expression immediately, you know? Actually, so I really started to feel that I've thought that, but then, you know, when you have a child, you start to see the world kind of fresh, just kind of necessarily it can happen because you realize they're seeing this thing. When I, I love watching soccer, like European football, like good soccer. And sorry, maybe that's a, is that the political thing now to not? The MLS, sorry, but when my, he's now five, but when he was like maybe two and a half, I think he might have seen like, you know,

like somebody scored a goal. And I think I remember looking over at him and he was just kind of like, you know, because these men look like they're going to rip each other apart and it's hard to explain. Yes, it is hard to explain. It's like they're happy. And, you know, make no mistake, that boy is seeing these men is like, this is what happy looks like yeah like that's confusing i mean that's confusing it is i mean that's

the modeling we get you know and it's sometimes it's on purpose and often it's not and um sophie what you were saying about men being sensitive i think that's so true i think right now without getting political we are watching very sensitive men who cannot admit that they're sensitive ruining the fucking world like i could think of the people that we would think of like like, oh, this guy is ruining the world, you could tell, you could see how sensitive they are and how much they hate that about themselves and how they want to be strong. I think of them as these, like, little, little, tiny little boys piloting man suits, you know, like these giant mech things that want to be strong, but you could see how much it hurts them.

And I think it's a, it's tremendously destructive. No, absolutely. 12 to 18, it's like really formative and you're sort of figuring out what person you are, what kind of man you're going to be. I felt the things I did, I've talked about this before, the things I did ended up really working against me, ended up working against my own, like, happiness. I think it ended up giving me a lot of anxiety. And it wasn't, and then all through my 20s and 30s, I was different.

You know, I was like, oh, I'm cool. You asked this early, were you cool? In my 20s and 30s, I was like, oh, I'm cool. I dress a certain way. I do this, whatever it is. I go out. I go parties. and all this.

And it wasn't really until a couple of years ago that I realized, like, oh, I'm the exact same person I was when I was 14. I just liked that guy now. That's the only thing that's changed is that I... So sweet.

...is that I like that guy. And I do really... It was hard. It's hard for everyone at that age. But now when I look back on it, it was particularly hard for me and it was particularly hard on myself. And it led to me having, like,

still a bad relationship with food. I think, you know, I don't want to, I'm not saying I have an eating disorder or anything, but I do have a disordered relationship with eating, and it all comes from that from wanting to be a certain kind of, certain kind of guy. No, that's very relatable. The other big thing that happened that was really like seismic for me around that age was I was in the same, I switched schools at like grade six and then grade six to, you guys have 11 years of schooling here, right?

We have 13, we kindergarten and then 12 years of like first grade. So they're like from grade one, it's great to grade. 12. So we have an extra year. We have 13. We have kindergarten and then 13. So when I got to college, I was a year older than everybody. So we go to college. You guys generally would graduate high school at 18. We generally would graduate high school at 19. So it's like a year longer. And my last two years, so it would have been the 12th grade and the 13th grade, I moved to a different school because I wanted to come to the U.S. to study. I want like the plan for our family was always like I go to a school that primarily has instruction in English,

and then that used that to sort of try and get into a college in America. And that's how I ended up in Iowa. I'll let you guys know about that. But my last two years, I went to a school that was particularly good at placing kids in American colleges. And so I went to a school that was kind of a rich kid school. And I was not a rich kid. I would say we were like middle class and in Karachi you know the wealth disparity is so huge that just the fact that we had a house and a car really puts you above most people so I'm not saying that we were there were certainly times I remember as a kid when times were tough and we had to be like okay you can't spend money and I remember money always being an issue my entire life where my dad was a doctor but he worked at a clinic in a poor part of town and it was one of the

those where like everybody gives like five rupees and they just go and see him and I would go sometimes visit him at his clinic and it was just like lines of people and his clientele was primarily people who were very very poor so we were we were okay but money was always was always always like tough it was like good and bad times and I went to the school where they were all like really really rich kids you know like these kids are like very very wealthy and those last two years in this new school were absolutely fucking miserable for me because I had a crush on a girl that ended up dating one of the cool kids

and then she dumped him and then her and I kind of dated for a very little bit. So I went from invisible to like suddenly very visible and then I was really relentlessly bullied for those two years. And I'd gone from a situation in my school before that where I was a nerd but everyone kind of liked me, you know? Like I had one of these.

where like I got like detention once by mistake and it was a total like breakfast club situation where I became friends with the bad kids. So I was friends with the nerdy kids but also like the bad kids kind of liked me. So I was like I had a pretty good, like I said, I wasn't super social, I wasn't going on,

but everybody liked me at the school or I was invisible. And then suddenly at the school I was visible and I was a target. And those two years were among the worst like years of my life still. like really, really... I'm so sorry to hear that. It was really miserable.

Like, they came to my house and through eggs at me and this kind of stuff. When I was like 17, I was 18 probably, actually, when that happened. And it's so embarrassing to have to, like... I remember, like, trying to clean the eggs before my parents came home because everyone explained to them, you know, what went on. So those two years were really, really, really miserable because I didn't have any, like, coping mechanisms in place because I didn't have to deal with bullying.

I came from a very supportive family. I was in a school situation that was pretty good for me. And then suddenly to be like relentlessly targeted people coming to my home. It was those two years were really, really tough. Anyway, so then the reason I came to Iowa was because we were going to come to the U.S. I didn't really have a sense that I didn't realize how big America was. because I knew America from movies and you see like New York and L.A.

and that's it. You don't see Iowa. I hadn't seen field of dreams. Yeah. So I did not know. And so I just applied to a bunch of liberal art schools because I didn't know what I wanted to be and I applied to a bunch of liberal art schools

in like tiny towns or like rural areas because I was kind of like, oh, I've lived in a big city. I want to see what that's like. And the school I went to was a school called, it's called Grinnell College. It's in a tiny, it's a, town of 9,000 people in the middle of Iowa. That was the highest ranked school I got into.

So I landed in Iowa, and I had no idea what to expect. It was just very different from what you guys had advertised for the rest of the world, you know. So how did you feel leaving, you know, the only home you'd ever known, like the only place you'd ever known? What was that shift like, you know? Like when you, when you, how did you feel like maybe in the months preceding, where, you know, you found you're accepted, you know you're going to go.

And then I'm curious, like, you set foot off the plane in, again, a very unadvertised part of our country. Like, you know, what are you thinking at this point? The first day I'm in this new school, I don't know anybody. I'm intimidated. Everyone's, like, better looking than me. They have better hair than me. And we're all just talking and the teacher comes in and she goes, oh, my God, so many kids. she like screamed it out loud

and everyone got quiet and I was like huh I just said that just as a reaction and she was like who said that and I raised my hand and she's like she literally said to me in front of class she was like I'm going to make life hell for you

because she wanted kids to drop the class because she had too many kids so literally for the next two weeks every single class she was a fucking asshole to me she'd be like why do you have this stupid look on your face why are you looking at me like that Why do you have this stupid look on your face?

Two weeks into this, relentless bullying, I was like, I don't want to be a doctor that bad. So I dropped biology and I took English literature instead because they had room in that class. Cut to two years later when I'm graduating and I'm coming to Iowa, all my friends were pre-med and they were all going to this really good med school in Karachi called Agha Khan. All my friends are going there. And I'm absolutely miserable because, like you said, Penn, I'm leaving to go to another country. It's not my first language. I can speak it. But I don't, I've never spoken it all day.

And I'm going to the other part of the world. I'm terrified. I love my parents. And I, and I'm like, I wish, I wish I hadn't dropped that class. And I'm so hard on myself. I'm like, if I hadn't dropped that class, I would have gone to this med school, I would have been with all my friends. And then truly, truly knowing in that moment that if I hadn't,

drop biology, I could have stayed home and, you know, gone with my friends to the school and become a doctor. And then, of course, I ended up coming here. The first two weeks in America were among my most miserable two weeks of my life. And then things got better, and I really loved it, and I made wonderful friends. I went to a very supportive school. I had a really great group of friends. I realized I was funny. I didn't realize I was funny until then I started doing stand-up, and now I have this life I have. And I truly, think if I had not said that huh and that one class

decades ago I would not be here talking to you guys right now I'd be a doctor somewhere I was thinking the whole time you were saying that I wanted to ask you do you believe in fate because although your teacher's behavior was indefensible it feels like I'm so grateful to her for being a total

fucking asshole because I would not have this life and now you're talking to us which is really the pinnacle of success Stick around. We'll be right back. If you're a last-minute shopper like me, you are very familiar with this feeling. It's the week before Christmas, store shelves are starting to empty out, and even worse, you're totally out of ideas. Well, the good news is there's a super easy and super personal

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to get a new member welcome bonus after your minimum qualifying purchases. Terms and conditions apply. You know, it's interesting for somebody who has such a, I mean, you know, like again, you're a writer. You're actually an Oscar nominated writer. You're, you know, you're a writer through and through like you've made it you've made it your your craft your livelihood and and you've done it now for a long time and at a high level and i mean for you to for you to not even um have a sense yet of that before you you're in this different place that is like hey you know be yourself self self self self explore everything you know i mean like in good and bad ways i'm just that's like interesting to hear. Well, that's such an interesting thing you bring up because that's sort of the American

narrative about itself. It's all personal freedom and there's good there and there is a lot of bad there. But this idea of like, point out who you are, what do you want to be when grow up all that stuff, you know, like individuality, the particularly American focus on individuality. We didn't have that. You know, we were a very, like, it's a very community-based culture like we don't you know it's still mostly arranged marriage because it's sort of a thing between families that kind of stuff so we didn't have that kind of pressure to be like what's your dreams fulfill your dreams what are you going to be it could be anything you want we don't really we didn't really have that to me I was like I have like three options there's and there is a ranking there's

doctor there's engineer and there's lawyer and those are you know those are sort of like the three paths that were in front of me. So I never thought of it as a reality. I did not feel there was any focus on, I don't think there's obviously enough focus on arts here. But growing up where I was, there certainly wasn't focus on arts at all. Like I don't know anybody else

who wanted to like do what I wanted to do. What would I do now at all? It wasn't something that was prioritized at all. You start doing stand-up pretty soon? Or, like, I mean, how quickly after you move here are you doing stand-up? Actually, my first year, you know, you take a thing called, I'm sure you guys have a, we called it a tutorial where you take, like, one class that's just teaching you how to be a college student. And it's generally a more, like, fun topic. It's not like chemistry or biology, something more specific.

And the class I took was stories, storytelling, and audiences. I remember, I wrote a story that I liked, and I remember, like, running it over and over. over and over again in my head. I remember in the shower just running that story over and over again in my head. And then I remember performing that story in front of class.

And it was kind of thrilling, you know? It was like really exciting. It was like a horror story that I wrote, like a sci-fi horror story. And I remember it had like a big like reveal punch at the end, the last line. So I was like, all right, I got to nail that last moment.

I got to nail that last moment. And I felt in that, I felt like I did nail it, you know? So it was like really thrilling. It was really exciting. And right around that time, I'd sort of really come out of my shell, because you're living with people. There are kids all around you. I was in the dorm.

It's sort of unavoidable. And people were genuinely really interested in me because they're like, you're Pakistan. What's that like? People were like genuinely curious. And I'm so grateful I went to a place like Iowa because I've gone to like New York. Nobody would have given a shit about a Pakistani kid. But in Iowa, they were like, what is that like? Do you have refrigerators?

Do you know that kind of stuff? We did. We did have refrigerators. We didn't have microwaves. And now I'm sure we do. We did not have a microwave. Anyway, and so I sort of started making a big group of friends. And I sort of started realizing that I was funny because people would be like, people would tell me, I was funny. I remember once I was sitting with a friend of mine outside my room and we were just chilling out. And I was just like being funny to her and making her laugh so much that she couldn't speak.

Oh, that's so nice. Oh, this is a great feeling. I remember specifically just like riffing and her laughing like that. And I'd also really, really, really fall in love with stand-up, like from fresh, you know, in college. I'd never really watch stand-up. I didn't grow up with stand-up. But over breaks, I would go to my uncle's house in Georgia. And I would, like, be up all night just watching HBO comedy.

They had a series called One Night Stand where comedians would do half hours, you know. gotten obsessed with Conan O'Brien and Letterman and I was just watching this stuff and I was just devouring stand-up and I just truly fell in love with it and my junior year, but I'd never done anything but I just loved it so much and then my junior year we had a little coffee shop

on campus called Bob's Underground like tiny coffee shop and this one kid who was older than me set up like a stand-up show and it was just that college kids going up and doing his stand-up for the first time So I went and watched, and I remember being so jealous of them. And I was like, okay, I have to try this.

Like, I was so scared to get up on stage. But the only thing scarier was not doing it. Like, I truly feel like I had no choice but to do it. So I was like, okay, I'll give myself six months. If I could come up with something I like, I'm going to sign up for this next year. And I'm going to go do it. So I wrote for six months. I wrote a bunch of jokes.

And I have a friend of mine, Fred, who's still friends with me. He lives in Minneapolis. He was like, hey, do you want to, like, bounce our jokes off of each other? And I remember me being in his room, reading my jokes to him, and he was like, hey, this is actually really funny. Like, he was kind of like, what the fuck is going on? Like, why are you good at this? And I went up on stage. And to this day, again, you know, it's all my friends in the audience.

It's just college kids. To this day, one of the best sets I've ever had in my life. I did like a half hour, which is crazy. You don't generally do a half hour until you're like five years into it. You don't get the opportunity. You're doing open mics, four minutes. I remember getting off stage and being like, I could do Letterman next week. And then I didn't do Letterman for another 10 years, you know.

But I did that and it was great. And I remember just like walking around and being like, hey, you're that guy that did stand up. You were so good. You've never done it before. It was just this thing. And then six months later, my senior last semester, the senior year, I wrote another half hour, I did it again, and it was so fun. And I was like, oh, this feels like the first thing that I could be good at that I also enjoy.

And I was like, I'm going to, I knew a lot of comedians came from Chicago. So I was like, I'm going to move to Chicago. I'm going to have a day job because I needed a day job for a visa. I was like, and I'm going to really see if I can like do stand up in front of a real crowd. So I moved to Chicago with some calls. college friends. I lived with them. And I remember looking through, we had this, it's gone now, I think. It was called the Chicago Reader. And you just go through the thing and it tells you where the open mics are and just me going up, signing up, and getting on stage. And I was really

lucky. I didn't really bomb until, I didn't have my first, like, bad set until I was four or five months into it, which is pretty rare. Now I'm old enough that I can admit and I wouldn't have been able to admit, this is going to sound arrogant. It was just right from the beginning, stand-up just made sense to me. Like, from the beginning, I just understood how to write a joke, how to perform a joke, how to be funny in front of a crowd. I mean, I was terrible. But, you know, I was around other people who were terrible. And I just knew immediately, I was like, oh, this is something I can do. There are people I know who have been doing stand-up for 20 years who've never done well. And I'm like, you are, it is so impressive that you're still doing this.

Like if I, if I had a bad set in the first month, I would have never done it again. So I'm lucky in that I didn't have that. Did you ever bomb on stage? We love a good bomb story, but Oh yeah. I remember the first time I bombed on stage. So I've been doing it a few months and I was sort of like the new guy in Chicago that everybody was, you know, it's a very low ceiling in Chicago, particularly when it comes to stand up with improv. You have second city and there's a whole system there. We were definitely like the orphans of the Chicago comedy scene. We were doing shows in front of like tiny crowds, you know, like people wanted to watch the bears and they'd be like, all right, and now comedy. And they hated us. I would have hated us. It's like, I remember

once you were at this, I booked a show, I went and it was like a nice restaurant, like with dates. And then suddenly there's like, and now we're going to do stand up. And I felt so bad for them. I was like, I know you don't want this. I don't want to see this. My first bomb. So I was like three or four months in and I was doing really well. And there was one comedy club in town called Zanis, which is still there. Small club, maybe 200 people, but they had like national headliners come through. You know, there wouldn't be like big name people, but there would be people that I'd seen on, you know, doing the set on Conan or the tonight show or whatever.

And they started having me come up and do like guest sets. So usually a stand-up comedy club, it's there's a host who does 15, a feature who does 25, and then a headliner who does. 45. So they started having me do guess that's, which you just go up and do seven minutes. They don't pay you, but it's like fun exposure. So I started doing that and I was going pretty well. And I remember one time I won up, for whatever reason, it just wasn't working. And how a stand-up works is the basic structure, now it's different. But the basic structure is you start with your second best joke, you end with your best joke, and in the middle is all the stuff that's not as strong. So you start strong, you end even stronger. So I got up, and I was always very nervous going out.

I got up, I did my first joke. It got nothing. So then I moved up my final joke, which is my best joke, up to the beginning. It got nothing. So now I've got six minutes left, and it's all my B material. All the good shit is gone. All that's left is the best. And I remember being up there in every line feeling like a physical punch in my gut.

Like, it felt like physical pain. And I remember watching the faces of the people. And they weren't even angry at me. They just felt pity for me. They felt sad that they were like, oh, he thought he could do this. Why did he think he could do this? That was the, I remember the face of this one woman looking up at me

and you just felt so sorry for me. I'd rather that they hated me, you know. They didn't even hate you. So that was the first time I like, I remember just what it feels like to really, truly bomb. But I'd had enough good sets behind me that I was like, okay, I got to get back up and do it. So that is a very, very memorable. Another very memorable bomb, if you guys like hearing these stories. This is years and years later.

Now I've moved to New York. I'm doing well in New York. I've maybe done some TV. I've written for a TV show. I'm doing well. And there's a, have you guys been to. Bonarue, the comedy festival? No.

Do you know what it is? No. So Bonarue is this huge comedy festival that happens in the middle of nowhere. I got to look up there. I thought Bonaroo was a music festival. It is a music festival, but they started having comedy. Yeah, it's a big music festival. Like when I was there, you know, it was, yeah, it's in Tennessee.

When I was there, like Metallica was playing. And I got booked to do it. And it was a big deal because they, you know, they have like four or five comedians. And I was like sort of a cool new guy doing comedy in New York. Like when I got in New York, because I had six years of Chicago under my belt, I was able to hit the ground running and I was able to like get a lot of stuff very quickly in New York. Like the fact that I waited so long to move actually worked in my favor because I had like a bunch of material.

I felt confident on stage. Anyway, I got booked to do the show. And the lineup was I was so excited. The lineup was me. Amy Schumer when we were both the same level then Todd Barry

who's really funny I'm a huge fan of I used to listen to his like on my disc man I would listen to his album on the way to work on the bus

and triumphed the insult comic doc Robert Michael so this was the show and I was like I cannot fucking believe I'm here you know

and you were a huge Conan fan growing up too huge I mean I still whenever and now I'm I'm friends with Conan whenever I see him I have to turn off that part of my brain that's like oh my God it's Conan O'Brien

I only have that with two people and that's Conan O'Brien and David Duccovney When I see them I kind of have to go like pretend you're not talking to Foxborough That's interesting I might feel the same way if I met David Decoveny I mean we had Conan on and the entire interview it was just like how are we interviewing Conan O'Brien this is

very difficult Conan is lovely and I've seen I've seen a lot of my stand-up heroes kind of curdle and become people like am disappointed in Conan's the opposite. Conan's is the platonic ideal of how to be a straight white male comedian

100%. That's very well put. I totally agree. Yeah. He was so gracious with us by the way. He didn't need to be like you know it was such a lovely experience. He's like he's kind of, you're right he's the platonic ideal. He's he's kind of perfect.

Yeah he's he's absolutely wonderful. So I Remember, Emily and I go into the trailer in the back behind the stage and we open the door and the triumph puppet is just laying there on the couch and everybody's like, weird. We've never seen him without a hand in him, you know? We've never seen him dead. We were like,

oh my God, I can't believe. We need Robert Smigel. He's so kind. He's so lovely. By the way, Robert Smigel is a great guy. I saw him recently. I got to induct Conan when he won the Mark Twain Award. I was one of the people who got to, like, Street. Oh, right, right. Yeah. You hung out with Robert Smigel again. I love that guy. Anyway, he comes and introduces himself to me. And I'm friends with

Amy, but I meet Todd Barry. It's really exciting. And the show is it's triumph hosting. Triumph goes up first, does a bunch of bits. It's me, Amy, then Todd. So I'm up first. And it's a big tent and this festival is super fucking hot. This is the only tent on the entire grounds, you know, and these people have been doing mushrooms for three days. They're dehydrated. They come into the tent sometimes so they can just like take a nap, you know. So it's not a good environment for stand-up. Any, nobody's going to do well. So I get up on stage, these people are there, and it is going particularly poorly for me.

Triumph went up, did well, I go up, and it is not going well for me. It is not going well for me. And they start booing me. This crowd starts booing me. And I sort of kind of turn on them. I get really angry, and I start yelling at them. I get really angry I start yelling at them and I kind of win them over

and they turn around and now they're like laughing and applauding and I'm so angry at them I'm like no have the courage of your convictions I want you to continue to boo me and I made them boo me for the rest of the set

and when I got off stage I remember my friend Nick Thune was there was a very funny comedian and he was like what the fuck was that man I made them boo me and then I got off stage and Robert Smigel came up to me and he was like, I'm, next show, you're going to be closing.

And I did. And to this day, if I, you know, if I do a talk show or something and a clip goes up on YouTube, every third or fourth clip, there'll be a comment that's like, I saw him have the worst that I've ever seen anybody have at Bono in 2009. And when I run into, when I ran into it, I didn't see Smigel for many, many years. And when I ran into him, I was like,

hey, do you remember? He's like, yeah, of course. remember. It's the worst I've ever seen anybody ever do it. I feel like people I've seen clips recently of people, I don't even know if they have any credentials behind them but saying

things like, you know, nobody's actually thinking about you as much as you're thinking about you. But then every so often you have an experience like that and you're like, no, people are. They are thinking about that time I bombed. It's so true. It's so true. My therapist is so wrong.

People are thinking about me. That's so true. It is because, you know, for these kids, they were like, oh, who's this guy? Why is he here? He shouldn't be here. He's terrible. And then seeing me in other stuff now and being like, oh, wow, strange. I've seen the trajectory.

Let's talk about night thoughts. Your new special. You had a gap sort of between, you've done amazing acting projects. Unfortunately, we won't have time to talk about them. And nobody knows what you were doing. nobody's paying attention but I'm curious what it was like for you like the first night

where you were testing out the new material how it felt to come back to it after a bit of a break So from like I would say 2014 to about 2023 I wasn't really doing stand-up I was focusing on acting I was really loving acting and it was during the actor and writer's strike I was like really frustrated creatively I'm about to go shoot this movie

and suddenly there's a strike I can't do anything and for years I had this feeling To be honest, I did not miss doing stand-up I did not miss the feeling of stand-up What I hate it No, I didn't because I found acting to be really I find acting to be very exciting and very challenging Like I find it still like

I have more to learn in stand-up too But I have much more to learn in acting, you know And I'm very aware of that Because with stand-up you're doing it yourself With acting you act with someone you're like Oh my fucking God Where is all that coming from? How do I do that?

what you're doing how does that happen you know um and so but the the i wasn't i didn't miss stand up i felt creatively satisfied what i missed was the feeling of being good at something that i'm not good at anymore and i hated that feeling i hated the feeling of like i hated of how intimidated i had become by stand-up at the thought of doing stand-up and when i were thinking i remember there were a couple years in new york like i said when i when at first moved to New York. For me, creatively, my two years in New York were the most, like, just creatively fruitful time for me. I was writing all the time. I'd really figured out my stand-up boys. I'd figured out how to be on stage. I'd figure out how to really be myself on stage in a certain

kind of way. I was writing a lot. The best jokes I've ever written were in those, like, two years. I was just, like, writing all the time and it was going great. And I remember in that period having the thought, I was like, I could go up in front of any room. do well. And as I'd left stand-up being like, that seems like a different person. I can't imagine being the person who could ever have that thought. And I hated that feeling. So what I did was, and I'd sort of gotten up on stage here and there. I hadn't really done stand-up, but I'd like done little bits here and there. And it had never really like awakened anything in me. And so I said, okay, I want to see if I could still be good at this and I want to see if I

could still enjoy it. So to do that, I have to recreate the conditions of when I was really doing it all the time. So I set up seven shows for myself over two weeks during the strikes. And I was like, I'm going to do all of these shows. And at the end of the two weeks, I'm going to decide if there's something I want to do again. And then that final show felt a little bit like old times. And that's when I was like, okay, I'll go back.

And the material developed very, in the grand scale. of things, it happened fairly quickly because I had, you know, I just had stuff I knew I wanted to talk about. So in the grand scheme of things, I got an hour fairly quickly, but it still took months and months and months, you know. I remember the first joke that I wrote when I came back where I was like, oh, okay, now I think I could do it because I think this joke is actually pretty funny. I was kind of telling stories. There was a lot of smoke and mirrors in the beginning. what was interesting was my first two weeks back on stage I was doing really well

because people hadn't seen me on stage in a while I was like a surprise guest people were excited to see me and I was so nervous on stage that I ended up being very present so there was something like very like it just felt like I was just really present

when I was there as I got more comfortable on stage I started doing less well and it was kind of of surprising. The first two weeks I did well, and then the next two weeks I wasn't doing as well. And I was trying to diagnose it and I figured out, oh, what's happening is I'm defaulting to how I was on stage 10 years ago because that's the muscle memory of it. But I'm a different person now and it's feeling disingenuous. And the audience can tell that I'm being something on

stage that I'm not as a person anymore. And so once I figured that out, I was like, okay, I know I want to be good at this and I'm going to figure out how I don't know what I am on stage now. And so I decided to go up on stage for the next two weeks and not try and do well, not be beholden to doing well and just lean back and just see what comes out. Just see how stand-up comes out, you know. And when I did that, when I went out and was like, all right, I just want to be super comfortable and see what happens. that's when I sort of started taking steps towards figuring out who I am on stage.

And I would say that's when I really started doing it, doing it again. And that was really exciting to be like, okay, this is who I am as a person. This is how that comes out on stage now. Now, what is the material that goes along with, who I am as a stage, and what I want to say as a comedian and artist right now? And it was interesting, you know, because I talk about this the special where I look different than I used to. And so Emily was the one who told me,

she was like, you can't be on stage the way you were back then because people's experience of you is very different now. You look different on stage. So the way you are on stage has to be different. So all that stuff took a lot of experimentation. Yeah, it makes me, you know, I've always wondered about this, but listening to you speak about it, it makes me, like, I don't know exactly how to ask the question

because like comedy is just so not my world but as you're you know so much of comedy is writing and we always hear comedians specifically stand-up comedians speak about writing I think stand-up comedians in Hollywood have this interesting kind that garner a very unique sort of respect

because you guys are sort of like directors editors actors actors and producers all in one at least when you you know that's what your set is you're like you're directing it and you're editing it because that's your delivery and so what you what this what you just described to me makes me think of like

how much is a well just what role your stage presence your persona plays in the writing you know what I mean like it's kind of a I don't know exactly how to separate them but I feel like they are they're distinct and I just wonder how

broadly how comedians approach it but I guess it sounds like for you you had to did it mean did you feel like it made your approach to writing purer because you weren't relying on this sort of previous rhythm or method of delivery? Yeah, there's a lot there.

That's a very insightful question. I think point perspective and point of view is by far the most important thing for a comedian. That is truly all that matters. I just did this Netflix show where I sort of, it's like a reality show with comedians where I went and watched a bunch of comedians and sort of worked with them a little bit. And all I care about, I don't care how funny you are, I don't care how well you do with the crowd,

all that matters is, are you on stage doing something in a way that nobody else can do, you know, like what, every human being is completely different. How is that relating to what you're doing on stage? How are you doing something on stage that only you can do? And for me, I remember very specifically, when I was four or five years into stand-up, my first few years in stand-up, I had a very mannered persona

where I wouldn't take the microphone out of the stand. I would play up my nervousness. I was kind of doing a whole thing because I was very nervous and it was easy for me to fall into that. And that kind of like nervous timing was really working for me. But I remember five years into it, I'd seen like an episode of Star Trek that I really loved. And I was like, oh, too bad I can't talk about it on stage

because my persona doesn't allow for it. And I was like, wait, that's a huge red flag. with stand-up, it's so pure, as you said, I should be able to talk about anything I want. So then it became a very intentional project for me just to blur the line between me off stage and me on stage, you know? And when I came back to do stand-up, that was really my intention.

I was like, I want to be 100% myself on stage. Of course, I'm not giving all of myself to the audience. There are parts of me that are just for me and my family and my wife and my friends, you know. But to be 100% completely authentic and true to myself on stage was the goal. Because I was like, I'm coming back to do stand-up. It's really hard. I like being at home with my wife at night. I'm taking time away from my relationships.

So it's got to be worth it. There's got to be something worth saying to be doing this again, and to be traveling all over the country again, doing this again. And so for me, it used to be when I would write stand-up, I'd think of something funny and say it. And then this time I was like, no, what are the things I want to talk about

and how do I make them funny? So I have a long bit about my cat being sick and medicating her. And I was like, this to me is a very unfunny thing. It's heartbreaking to me that my cat is sick. it's so important to me that if I don't talk about it on stage I'm not being true to myself

so much of my days is spent worrying about my little cat that's really sweet especially because we've seen it and so for you the way that I'm sorry I just laughed when you said that it's not funny that it's heartbreaking for you because

it was funny yeah well I'm just remembering the good Christian girl and that's yeah good Christian girl you guys and it's I'll say this because you'll know it when you watch the final special she she passed away last month oh i'm sorry it was the saddest i've ever been in my life and then last week we got to do kitten

so but we put a little thing at the end of the special and we say in loving memory of bagel our sweet christian girl anyway that's gonna really gonna hit people when they see it when they see at the end because we just we just saw it without that without the little i know we really were like we really talked about it, but I owe it to her. She's in the marketing materials too, so like in the billboards and posters, it's me and her together. And we were like, should we take her out? I was like, no, we shouldn't.

This is what it is, you know? Like, if I want to be truly authentic, this is part of it. This is what life is. And I wanted to like really communicate, try and communicate some truth about existence as I see it, right? So I was like, okay, I have to figure out how to make

this funny. So that was a bit that truly starts from zero and becomes a whole 10-minute thing that comes from me wanting to talk about this thing. It's not like, oh, that was funny. I should make that into a bit. It was really like, as opposed to the pool story, which was the opposite, something funny happened, and I made it into a stand-up thing. Right, right, right, right, right. And then the last 15 minutes of it where I sort of talk about my body changing and people's reaction to it and my relationship with my own emotions and therapy and all this stuff, Again, was this is the stuff I've been really thinking about for the last five years.

I need to be able to talk about this on stage. Otherwise, I'm doing a disservice to myself. I don't know if I'm going to keep doing stand-up after this. So I need to figure out how to say all this stuff in a way that is funny and interesting to the audience. And so those two bits, specifically the cat bed in the last 15 minutes of my set talking about all this stuff, my emotions and therapy and all this really came from me trying to be authentic on stage and communicate something

that previously before the break I would not have been able to communicate on stage. Well, without, I'm realizing that, you know, people haven't seen it so I don't want to, comedy is one of these things where you really, I don't want to like, you know, ruin a punchline here. But I do want to just say that you're, really do that i mean the like i really enjoyed i really really enjoyed it and especially as you get to

the um you know kind of you you you've named it night thoughts and so yeah once you you sort of hit that theme in the show which i think maybe about 20 minutes in it's like an hour long set you uh you not that you hit your stride but it's like i think what i realized as it as it progresses is that you are talking about more and more meaningful things and you and you I mean you know you talk about immigration in a way that's both funny but also like touching and and you speak about anxiety in a way that is that is poignant and and of course funny but then you you you mentioned things about anger that I think are like you know I think this sign of dare I say genius or something like it is when you

is anybody who can take something that's kind of like it's complex and just make it simple for a moment, you know? And that is why, of course, comedy is so gratifying to watch. And you do something when you're describing in kind of story form, again, I don't want to give away, like, details and for it. But you describe anger in a way that I was like, and as a person who works with anger and therapy and, you know, playing a raging sociopath for my entire 30s,

I've thought about anger. And you actually did something there where I was like, yeah he just kind of rearranged all the things I just knew and touched on it and like a new it was it was really lovely especially as a man to just to hear something oh thank you I don't know it was I really like that thank you yeah you know I talked to Emily about that a bunch where she was like when you're like when I was like sort of a really nerdy scrawny guy I look like a certain kind of man and now I look like a certain kind of man that you know obviously presents very differently. But Emily was like, you need to talk about this stuff because it's

going to feel different coming from you because in many ways you look like the kind of guy that these people think is a certain kind of way. It's so true, yeah. And so she was like, I think it'll mean a lot coming from you talking about vulnerability and emotionality and the importance of sitting in yourself and being in touch with yourself and the importance of crying and all this stuff. She's like, it's just going to, it's just going to hit differently. And I think, it's important that you do it um it's so interesting that you say that you're exactly that's how i saw it minute 20 is when i hit the night thoughts thing and that is to me when i do the set i've done this set now so many times in preparation for the special that's when i feel like i start going downhill

in a good way up to then i feel like i'm setting the stage to get to that bit and when i get to that bit i'm like all right now it so works it's all momentum now i all know and so you know the The structuring of it is there is some logic to it, emotional logic to it, I think, where I start the set, the first few bits are just like biddy bits, you know, about like encores and smoking pot and all this stuff. And then there's a fairly hard pivot to me talking about my cat being sick. And that is like me saying, this is going to be a little bit different from other stand-up. You see in the sense that it is going to be a little bit more vulnerable.

But really, I think I'm resetting expectations there for what this set's going to be. I'm kind of training the audience to go, like, this is going to be, it's not all completely funny. I mean, hopefully it is, but it's also something a little bit like softer than that. And then, and doing that bit sometimes was for me emotionally doing the whole cat thing was difficult fairly often, even though it's funny and I wanted to be funny I could feel her presence whenever I did that in fact I've only done one hour since she passed

and I wasn't able to do that material I was like you know so I was like I just doesn't feel it's I'm lying I can't do it did you know that before you went up or did you try to do it I knew that before I went up I was like I'm not going to be able to do this material and so I kind of it's you know I was contractually obligated to do an hour

so I at the end of my set it's like 10 minutes shorter and I was like hey just so you know I tell a long story about my cat being sick but she died so do you have any questions and so then it just turned into like a Q&A which ended up being really fun because weirdly people started talking about their cats

an interesting thing happens in that set which I have never felt doing stand-up is when I start talking about my cat the audience changes like you could feel so many people have had the experience of losing a pet or you know it's such a specific

kind of love I don't have children obviously I know I know Penn you do I don't know if you guys have children I have a dog who's my child yeah right so it is a new kind of love isn't it and Penn what you feel obviously I have so many kids I could get rid of one to be honest I have no I'm not kidding I have four and I'm just like

swimming in children right now some are redundant it's an interesting thing happens where I feel the audience opens up when I start talking about her because they can relate to it so like deeply and that sometimes they hear people you saying that makes me

it validates a thought I had while I was watching this I don't think in a comedy set I've ever heard an audience go aw yeah and they do it once they do it once and I was like wow yeah it's an interesting thing and it's not something that I had anticipated but it really changes how the people how people start receiving the show

and then after that I think they're like okay, now you're in a place where I can talk about anxiety, where I can talk about emotions and all this stuff. You know, after that, I feel like all the tough part, all the heavy lifting is done after the cat bed. And then I can, then I feel like they're really open and ready to receive this other stuff. And again, I don't mean to say, like,

it really is an hour of jokes. It's an hour of stand-up. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to do an hour of stand-up. And I wanted it to be funny the whole time. I'm not like saying like, how I wrote this thing to change the world, whatever. But it just was the only way I could figure out how to do stand-up

and still have it be exciting to me. It's really sweet to hear you bring up Emily so often in like these conversations about your work. Like her input, I don't know, it's just very sweet to imagine the two of you collaborating and creating that way. But I had a question about the title of your specialist. So as we've said, it's night thoughts.

And in the special you go through a list on your phone of these like anxiety-fueled thoughts that come to you before bed. And they're so very so funny. I'm not going to give any of them away. But I was curious if you had any that didn't show up in the special, but that you could tell us now. One night I couldn't sleep and I was like, racks can climb walls. They're so weird. They're so good. How could they do that?

Like no other animal that size climbs walls. Like bugs climb walls, and that's kind of it. It's weird that they could do that. Rats are the worst. That's scary to think about that they can climb walls. They're just like, well, they can go anywhere. That's good. Well, it's a hard pivot, but our last question that we ask everybody is to go back, if you could go back, to 12-year-old Kumal.

What would you say or do, if anything? I mean, I would say you're perfect just the way you are. Sweet. Because I truly, really didn't like myself at that age. I really, really, really didn't. And I wished I was someone else. And it was something that occupied so much of my brain, you know. And I'm sure a lot of people have this exact thing.

But it took me so long to learn to like myself. that, and also like, hey, you're going to be friends with Conan O'Brien and what, Beck? A little preview. Yeah. Thanks, Mel. Thank you so lovely. Thanks for your generosity, spending so much time with us. What a pleasure.

Oh, thanks for talking to me. This was so wonderful. I knew I was like, all right, get ready for some heavy shit. But I really, really, like, I was like, I'm not going to do therapy today because I think I'll have kind of done it already. So thank you for talking to me. That was wonderful. You can watch Kamal Nanjani's special on Hulu called Night Thoughts out December 19th.

You can also follow him online at Kamel N. Pod Crushed is hosted by Penn Badgley, Navakavalin, and Sophie Ansari. Our senior producer is David Ansari, and our editing is done by Clips Agency. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonaut a premium yet, yet now's the perfect time because guess what you can listen completely ad free plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content like the time we talked to luka bravo about the profound effect that the film into the wild had on him the conversation was so moving and you are not going to hear it anywhere else just tap the subscribe button on apple podcasts or head to lemonata premium.com to subscribe

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