A Quote by Kumail Nanjiani
When generally people make race-based jokes to me - even if they're not technically racist, they're sort of based on me being Pakistani or whatever - on Twitter, you know, I block a lot of people who say something weird about my name or something. It does bug me generally, but it is all about context.
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People are in denial all the time, hiding things. If I tell you a racist or dirty joke and you laugh, you're telling me something about yourself, which you don't want to reveal. Accessing that hidden side is what good acting is all about. And there are only a handful of people in the entire United States who interest me as actors, who surprise me. Even people who write about it, don't know anything about good performance. At least when you work at General Motors, you know something about cars.
Even if you're doing something that the studio sends you, or something that's based on a book or story, at the end of it all, you try to make whatever it is your own. This is based on my love of horror movies. Everything is based on something, in some way.
If I've got Writer's Block it generally means that I don't have that much to say or something's not quite connecting. I have had Writer's Block a bunch of times and it's generally because I'm not able to write down what I'm feeling basically. Mostly, I just need to be alone really, or be with someone who can bring that out of me.
Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, "You're based." They'd use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive. I started embracing it like, "Yeah, I'm based." I made it mine. I embedded it in my head. Based is positive.
I think there's a perception out there that people know me based on these glamorous photos they see of me in magazines, but I have about two hours of hair and makeup and then people to dress me, to make me look even better, in those pictures.
I think there's a perception out there that people know me based on these glamorous photos they see of me in magazines, but I have about two hours of hair and makeup and then people to dress me, to make me look even better, in those pictures. There's really so much more to me than that.
I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.
The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.
A lot of people don't know me. I was a man in a suit for many years, but it's really gonna work to my advantage and I've always known that. I'm turning 30 in a month... that's something for me to look at. Generally when people see me and greet me, they're kind of astonished at what I really am. It's all about playing character and really becoming somebody else. I've always said, "Acting is nothing more than paid schizophrenia if you're doing it right.".
But let me say this about learning experiences: they're weird. Or put it this way: what you learn from a learning experience is generally something else.
I just got on Twitter because there was some MTV film blog that quoted me on something really innocuous that I supposedly said on Twitter before I was even on Twitter. So then I had to get on Twitter to say: 'This is me. I'm on Twitter. If there's somebody else saying that they're me on Twitter, they're not.'
I like sort of esoteric and weird Twitter jokes. But I actually unfollow people if they make jokes about a celebrity's death within the first two minutes of that celebrity dying.
I usually need to read emails to actually wake up. I'll read these and Twitter, and my brain will start to get going about what a narcissistic monster I am. I read on Twitter who is talking about me. I'll also start making jokes for the day based on what I read on Twitter.
I like to talk about very different topics. I like to jump around a lot because I don't want people to come see me and then for an hour I tell jokes about being a little person. I just don't want that to happen. I understand that it's part of me, that's the first thing that you notice and it's something that people are curious about.
People miss those who they love. It brings tears to my eyes to see the longing for me. But it's my decision to do fewer films and more protagonist-based roles. For me to take up something, it has to make a lot of sense to me.
The thing that struck me is so many people that said, "Hey, I've been watching you since I was 12, and I'm 25 now." It was a weird shift, because you start off fighting for an audience based on doing something so strange that only you find funny, and it's weird when other people find it funny. Those people aren't always ready to laugh yet, and there's a sort of standoffish quality to it.
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