It’s going to be great seeing Kumail Nanjiani break out as one of Marvel’s latest line of heroes with The Eternals because not only will it be a pretty big step in terms of representation on the big screen, it sort of caps off an unsavoury casting experience in which Kumail refused to play up his accent for a “really big movie.”
The GOAT team dive right into this whole Kumail Nanjiani accent story on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
Appearing on Variety‘s “#REPRESENT: Success Stories”, Kumail Nanjiani talked about the discomfort at playing up his Pakistani accent for “stereotypical brown guy roles” in Hollywood films and how he’s okay with making it thicker for certain roles but not for solely comedic purposes.
This ultimately culminated with Kumail revealing how he turned down a “really, really big movie” because he didn’t want to put on a heavily-exaggerated accent.
“So there was a really, really big movie, actually, that I auditioned for, and I was a taxi driver, and the director was like, ‘Hey, could you play up the accent a little bit?’ And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t.’And then the guy felt really bad.”
While Kumail doesn’t mention what this “really big movie” was, Variety did some sleuthing and dug up an old 2014 episode of his now-defunct podcast, The Indoor Kids, in which he talked about being asked to play up his accent for the role of the taxi driver in Marvel’s Deadpool movie.
Well how about that, Kumail Nanjiani almost made it into a Marvel movie alongside Deadpool years before The Eternals was even a seed of an idea.
Having said all that though, Kumail does say he doesn’t “regret” his decision to turn down his chance of being in a Marvel movie or hanging out with Deadpool Ryan Reynolds at the time.
All the respect to Kumail Nanjiani for standing up for his accent, even if it meant a role in Deadpool. Representation is a big issue in Hollywood and it’s really sweet to see people like Kumail sticking to his principles.
And hell, it all paid off big time for Kumail anyway. When 2021 comes along, he’s going to be in a big Marvel movie and “Kumail Nanjiani” will shown in big letters next to “The Eternals” in every movie cinema around the world.
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