Mira Nair didn't want to cast Kal Penn in The Namesake, after son showed her Harold and Kumar: ‘Beta, this is clearly not the guy for us'

Indian Express

6 days ago

Actor Kal Penn was the latest guest at Express Adda, a platform for candid conversations hosted by The Indian Express Group. During the conversation with Anant Goenka, Executive Director, The Indian Express Group, Kal shared how his breakout role as Kumar in Harold & Kumar almost sabotaged his chances to be cast in Mira Nair's The Namesake.
The actor shared how he was battling with stereotypical roles during his early days, and talked about the film Van Wilder, in which he played the role of Taj Mahal. Kal admitted that the Van Wilder gig actually helped him land Harold & Kumar, but the film in turn almost lost him the role of Gogol in The Namesake. He shared, 'The Namesake has been my favourite project, and Mira was a role model of mine when I was a kid. She was one of the catalyst of why I became an actor. The way I got that role, was that I wrote her a letter and I said, 'The Namesake is an incredible book, and you have to let me audition for it.' It just so happened that her 14-year-old son (Zohran Mamdani) was a fan of Harold & Kumar. He told her to cast me and actually showed her clips from the movie. She instantly said, 'Beta this is clearly not the guy for us,' but then she got my letter and said, 'What the heck, because of my son have to let him audition.''
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Kal Penn also shared his experience of working with Irfan Khan in The Namesake and said, 'He was incredible. He had this power of communicating through silence. There is this one scene, when he comes into my room in college to give a book, and he just uses silence to show what his character is feeling. He does something similar when where are in a car and he tells Gogol the origin of his name, and in both those scenes, there is so little dialogue, but he such a beautiful and generous performer. We all miss him.'
Kal admitted that while some of the roles he played, or was offered, were frustrating at the time, in hindsight, they paved the way for the work he truly wanted to do.
Also Read | Kal Penn reveals regret doing teen sex comedy Van Wilder: 'I played a fairly stereotypical Indian exchange student'
The Express Adda is a series of informal interactions organised by The Indian Express Group. Previous guests at the Adda include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, philanthropist Bill Gates and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta.