Review: You Can’t Be Serious by Kal Penn
The actor’s memoir talks about breaking into Hollywood, his time on Obama’s team and about being a gay man comfortable with his sexual orientation
Actor Kal Penn’s memoir, You Can’t Be Serious, true to its name, is filled with stories that are sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre, and sometimes unbelievable. Penn, who played Nikhil Ganguli aka Gogol in Mira Nair’s film The Namesake (2006), usually punches above his weight, and seems comfortable laughing at himself. Those who have enjoyed his work in the Harold & Kumar film franchise will certainly relish this book.
Soon after graduating from the School of Theatre, Film and Television at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), he went for an audition held by the Warner Bros (WB) network. The casting head asked him to read a scene. Two pages in, she interrupted him, and asked, “What are you?… Like where are you from?” When he mentioned the name of his university in response, she said, “No, I mean like where are you really from? Are you Latin?”
If you don’t follow the actor’s work, you may not know that his official name is Kalpen Suresh Modi. He got hardly any auditions with that name. People rejected him without even meeting him. An Indian American actor in Hollywood was an anomaly. He decided to split Kalpen into Kal Penn, with some inspiration from Sean Penn. The change worked in his favour. He started getting more auditions but the racism did not end. This book shows how “emotionally draining” and “creatively suffocating” it is to be judged by colour and race in a professional context where only credentials and capability should matter.
Coming back to the casting head at the WB network, Kal told her, “I’m uh, ethnically Indian.” Before he could finish his sentence and tell her that he was from New Jersey, she said, “You look like you could pass for Latin. Are you mixed, at least?” He was shocked at this question but managed to say “Mixed? Um, no”. She replied, “Ugh, are you sure?” This is only one of numerous humiliating incidents chronicled in this memoir. The author tries to take such nasty experiences in his stride but he also allows himself to be vulnerable and vent.
While this is not a self-help book, it could serve as one for Indians struggling in the United States. During his early days, the author was fortunate to meet another American of Indian heritage in the entertainment industry – Sonia Nikore, the Vice President of casting at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). She gave him her number, and said, “Call me anytime you need anything.” He was moved by her generosity and took her up on the offer when he was offered – believe it or not – the role of an exchange student named Taj Mahal.
When Kal told her why the name and the background of this character made him hesitant to take up the role, Nikore asked him, “When you read the script, did you laugh? Are parts of it funny?” He told her that he found it “super funny”; not all the gags and setups were rooted in ethnic stereotypes. She asked him, “On the stereotypes, how many things in the script made you cringe.” When he said 30, she advised him, “Pick the 10 things in the script that you think are the most cringeworthy, and if you get the job, sit down with the writers and bring those 10 things up.” Until this conversation, Kal had not even considered this approach.
Nikore helped him understand that brown actors in the US tend to have resumes that are thin as compared to white actors. This was much before the Netflix series Never Have I Ever. With her experience in the industry, she made Kal see that simply calling out stereotypes would not work in his favour. She said, “You have to put in some work too. Come prepared with 10 things that are funnier than what the writers came up with originally. Nobody is making this movie to purposely offend or degrade anyone. They’re making it because they want audiences to laugh, to have fun, to spend money.” Kal learnt to take ownership.
How did he land the role in Nair’s film? That too is a hilarious story, and Kal does a great job of unravelling it. He knows how to keep readers asking for more. He and John Cho – his co-star in the Harold & Kumar franchise – wanted to get the rights to adapt Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake into a film. When they were told that Nair had already bought the rights, Kal was thrilled. He loved Nair’s films Salaam Bombay! (1988) and Mississippi Masala (1991), and he had met her on the UCLA campus to hand over his headshot and resume.
Desperate to get the role of Gogol, he wrote Nair “a platonic love letter” gushing about the impact of her work on his life, and how she had to let him audition because it was the role of a lifetime and he was deeply in love with Lahiri’s novel. Nair asked him to fly down for a meeting. When he reached, she told him that her son Zohran – who was a 13-year-old school kid at the time and is a 30-year-old politician now – was a big fan and wanted to meet him. Zohran had been pestering his mother to audition Kal but she thought he was not a good fit. She invited him to meet her only because she found the letter beautiful, and because he insisted on auditioning. In fact, she even told him that she had already offered the part to someone else.
When the audition began, Nair was flummoxed. She was so impressed that she regretted not auditioning him earlier. She told Kal, “The other actor, you should know, has the offer for Gogol but has not closed his deal. He might have a problem doing some of the sex scenes. If you were cast, would you have the same problem?” He did not have a problem. The other actor decided to back out. Nair offered the role to Kal. He was working on another project but his manager assured him, “I’ll get you out of it.” And that’s how he landed his dream project.
Reading this book, you will find yourself rooting for the author. He comes across as a person with a relentless drive to succeed despite the obstacles in his path. Through his story, he captures what it feels like to be the son of struggling immigrant parents. He writes lovingly of his grandparents in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, and is proud that they marched with MK Gandhi as satyagrahis protesting colonial rule.
Apart from his acting career, this book also gives a peek into Kal’s work with the White House Office of Public Engagement. He took a sabbatical from Hollywood, and became President Barack Obama’s Liaison to Young Americans, the Arts Community, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Kal recalls speaking at Obama’s inaugural concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and says it was surreal for him to be there alongside Tom Hanks, Ashley Judd, Bon Jovi, Usher, Beyonce Knowles, Queen Latifah, Bruce Springsteen, and other celebrities.
Since Kal was a performer at the event, he was allowed to bring guests. He took his parents and his brother along but was worried his father might embarrass him in public. This incident is so comical that you might fall off your chair while reading. Kal told his father. “Dad, listen, there are going to be a lot of famous people backstage, okay? If there’s someone you’d like to meet, pull me aside and tell me so I can figure out if it’s appropriate to bother them.” His father was upset, and asked, “You think I don’t know this? I get so annoyed when other people do these things to you! I would never do that to somebody else.”
As you must have guessed, the old man could not keep his promise. He was gobsmacked when he saw Tiger Woods and ended up standing just six inches away from him. When Kal saw his father clicking photographs, with the flash on, he ran over, grabbed the camera, and reprimanded him. His father shut him up, saying that the “verbal contract” did not apply to Tiger Woods.
Kal’s account of the bureaucratic procedures at the White House will crack you up but funnier than that is an anecdote about his interaction with a barber who apparently also ran a tapas bar. This man wanted Kal to bring his “whole office” to the bar. Kal politely refused because Obama had made it clear that people working for the White House should not be seen as “endorsing a private business, accepting gifts, or leveraging their position”.
The barber almost made Kal feel guilty about not falling in with his suggestion. “Look, man. I’m a small-business owner from a minority background… It would be such an absolute honour to have you guys there. If you can’t accept anything for free, I’ll charge you,” he said. Kal took his card, and assured him of a phone call if any out-of-office event or a staff party needing a tapas bar came up soon. It was only later when he reached home that he realized he had misheard “topless bar” as “tapas bar”!
Though Kal is a widely recognized face now thanks to his work at the White House and his roles in series like How I Met Your Mother and Designated Survivor, not much is known about his private life. When he wrote about his fiancée Josh in this book, it came as a shock to many of his fans because they did not know that he had been in a relationship for 11 years. A gay man comfortable with his sexual orientation, Kal has been out mainly to his near and dear ones. In this book, he shares tender moments from his courtship with Josh.
It is inspiring to see the author celebrate what he cherishes about his country but also speak out against what is not aligned with his beliefs and values. He writes about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy in the United States that “prohibited gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military”. He mentions that more than 32,000 service members were “discharged under DADT and its predecessor policies.” Once, when Kal’s job at the White House required him to be in South Korea, he ran into some soldiers at a gay bar. He was surprised because that place was “technically off limits to American military”.
Only one of the American soldiers in that group was gay. The others were straight allies. One told Kal, “When the rest of us found out about him, it wasn’t even a question that we’d never report him to our higher-ups. We’re a unit… We’re not going to get him kicked out. We’d take a bullet for each other… The only thing that’s changed is that we now hit up both gay and straight bars on our days off, so that all of us have a shot at getting laid.” This book will find a special place in your heart, and it will remind you not to take things too seriously.
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator who tweets @chintanwriting
The views expressed are personal