Interview with Kumail Nanjiani
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Kumail Nanjiani
Pakistani-American comedian, actor and writer, born in Karachi. Known for Silicon Valley, The Big Sick, which he co-wrote with Emily V. Gordon, and Eternals.
Source: Mike Birbiglia on YouTube
These answers are taken from Kumail Nanjiani | Oh, Mary!, The Big Sick, and a Return to Stand-Up | Working It Out Podcast on Mike Birbiglia's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
When did you start doing comedy?
Only my senior year [of college]. I did like one set each semester. Guess how much time I did my first time? I did 30 minutes. My first time on stage. But it wasn't just me. It was a bunch of people.
Then I spent six years in Chicago doing standup. I had my office job in Chicago when I was doing standup at night, an office job that I was terrible at.
When I got to New York and I started doing open mics, I was doing open mics with people who'd been a few months into it. I had six years of standup and confidence behind me. Then I spent two years in New York. Creatively, still the most fulfilling years of my career, because I wrote so much. I wrote constantly. I wrote the bits I'm most proud of in those two years.
What was a great moment for you as a comedian?
We were premiering Silicon Valley at South by Southwest, and Judd [Apatow] was there. I'd never met him. Pete [Holmes] was doing his podcast and had a bunch of guests on: me, Judd, Todd Barry, Chris Gethard. Judd and I got along great, and we kind of hung out that weekend and had a great time. And then that Monday I got a call from my manager: hey, Judd wants to know if you have any ideas. I was like, whoa. This is the biggest comedy director in the world.
So I went in and had a meeting, and I had all these ideas. One of the ideas was about a ghost witch. It's a witch who dies, and then it's the ghost of the witch. And he was like, do you have any other ideas? And then I was like, well, my girlfriend was in a coma right when we first started dating, and I fell in love with her while she was in a coma. And he's like, yeah, that's the story. Do that. And that's how it happened. That's how [The Big Sick] started.
How did your career as a comedian unfold?
All of my stuff leads back to Portlandia. I got so many breaks from doing the first season of that show. And I realized, oh, you could do comedy like this. It can just be fun.
That happened because, this is how lucky I was, when I first moved to New York, Colbert needed a brown guy for a sketch. One of the writers I had done standup with said, can you come do this one little sketch? I did the sketch, it went well, and they had me back a couple of times. Then a couple of years later I was in Brooklyn going down to the subway, and I ran into the director of Colbert, and she was like, hey, I'm working on another show, do you want to come do it? The next day I get an email about Portlandia. I was already doing Bumbershoot in Seattle, so I could just drive down the next day. I shot that scene for like two hours. Truly, she thought of me because she saw me walking down the subway stairs. And that little three-minute sketch changed my life. That sketch led to every job I've had.
What advice do you have for new comedians?
Whenever people ask me for acting advice, I say be nice to everybody, get to work on time and learn your lines. I learned that at my office job in Chicago, which I was terrible at. But I was nice to everybody, and everyone around me in my department kept getting fired. Those other people were better at their jobs, but they kept me just because people liked me. So I think that's the thing: I work hard and I'm good to work with. I think that led to everything.
Pete Holmes gave me this advice when I was first moving to New York. He said you can never compare yourself to other people. I've seen talented people get eaten from the inside because they're like, why does that guy have that? So when I moved here I was like, all right, I'm only comparing myself to myself and to nobody else. It's still hard to do, but it's a good guiding star.
And for years I thought work and personal relationships are different. I've learned, no, work with your friends. Rob McElhenney, who does Always Sunny, always works with his friends. James Gunn always works with his friends and family. And they have a lovely time, because they trust these people.
Has your career as a comedian progressed the way you expected?
Not at all. How could I? I really think if there are all the parallel universes, this is the only one where I'm successful. I think things just lined up just right. I know exactly the right place, right time thing for every single step that led to the next thing. I got lucky because I was here at this time, and then they needed this, and it just sort of worked out.
[With Eternals] I was like, oh, this is going to be my job for the next 10 years. I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. So you're like, this is the next 10 years of my life: I'll be doing Marvel movies every year, and in between I'll do my own little things. And then none of that happened. It came out and got really bad reviews and didn't do that well, and it shattered me too much. That's when I was like, I need to go to therapy to figure this out. I love the movie. I'm very proud of the movie.
Describe your style.
In Chicago it was a persona. It was a character, sort of a really nervous guy, because I was really nervous growing up, and I was a big fan of Jake Johannsen, so I sort of took that on. Then I remember I'd just watched an episode of Star Trek that I really loved, and I was like, oh, too bad my persona doesn't allow me to talk about it on stage. And then I was like, I've got to fix that. If something is exciting that I want to talk about on stage and I can't, then I've limited myself too much. I have to be myself on stage. That was five or six years into it.
When I'm doing standup or acting, I don't think about comedy in terms of how I deliver it or timing. I just have to shut my brain and go on instinct. Before I say it, I don't know how it's going to come out. That's the only way I've learned to trust myself.
When you first start off you're talking about things that are funny, and later you talk about things you want to talk about and make them funny. In the new special, I have a cat that I love very much. She was sick, and this really shook me, and I wanted to talk about it on stage. That took some doing: a seven-minute bit about my cat's heart condition.
Tell me about a bit or a project that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
I first started writing [The Big Sick] on my own, and then I went to Emily and I was like, this is both our story. We need to do this together. We'd never written together, which to me is the most intimate form of working together. People are seeing inside your brain.
I'd written the pages from my perspective, and then she reads it and rewrites it from her perspective. So truly, in writing The Big Sick was the first time we understood what it was like for the other person to go through it, because our experiences are very different. When she's in a coma for eight days, we are absolutely miserable. We don't know if she's ever going to come out. She's not there for that. When she wakes up, she's miserable: tube down her throat, she can't talk, they have to tie her down. And we're elated, because she's going to be fine. So on paper you'd think our experiences were similar, but we didn't go through the same things in any way. Understanding what it was like for her to have your body betray you, I really didn't understand any of that until we started writing it.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
My first language was Urdu, but now I think I'm truly bilingual. I think the foundation is still Urdu, because if I'm really tired, sometimes I'll say Urdu instead. When I wake up first thing in the morning, I'll start speaking in Urdu and then be like, oh right, this one doesn't understand it. Although Emily has been learning for a few years now. But I truly think I dream and think in both languages. I'm not translating anymore.
I come from a very funny family. My parents are very funny. The structure of the sentences is so different: Urdu is right to left, and where we put verbs and subjects is different. I think that makes you generally approach things a little differently too, where you could see different ways to approach a thing, because there are different ways to structure a thought.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
I kind of went the other way and did go into the machine. I have no regrets, but I'm a writer too, and I feel like I'm only using one part of my skill set. I want to at least be able to control more of the machine if I'm going to be in the machine. There's a small movie I want to direct. Emily and I started a production company, and we're now trying to make our own stuff. I just got sort of dazzled by people wanting to cast you, and it's great, but you're at the mercy of other people's mistakes. And I want to be at the mercy of my own mistakes.
I'm jealous of Seth Rogen. Seth and Evan have done what they wanted to do their entire careers. They went into the machine for a second and then realized, no, that's not how we do best. He's created his own work. He's got an infrastructure. I've seen him get better as an actor and as a writer. I'm jealous of what he has built.
Kumail Nanjiani's Full Biography
Kumail Nanjiani was born on 2 May 1978 in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. He is an actor and writer, known for The Big Sick (2017), The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) and Life as We Know It (2010). He has been married to Emily V. Gordon since 14 July 2007.