Yes, My Accent Is Real

by Kunal Nayyar

  And I began to cry. In that moment the character of Alvaro is not supposed to cry, but I was having an out-of-body experience. Tears flowed down my cheeks. I suppose someone might say that by crying I took the character out of the scene and did a disservice to the play, but I could tell—I could feel—that the audience was with me. Completely, utterly with me. And I wasn’t crying because the character was feeling silk on his skin for the first time; I was crying because I finally got it. I was crying because I now understood that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was crying because I realized how much heartache it took to get here. And I was crying because I knew that I had the power to control the energy in the room.

  After that performance I went home, and I replayed that moment in my mind, and I kept hearing over and over again, ssssssssssss. It made me realize the audience really is on my side. I had found something inside myself that made me believe. It was time to let go of the fear. Before I was my own worst enemy—the self-doubt, the insecurity—and now I could break free of those shackles. After that ssssssssssss I knew that something had changed. I get it now. I’m in.

  The next day I called my mom and dad.

  “I’m not going to business school,” I told them. “I’ve decided I want to be an actor.”

  “How are you going to pay your bills?” they could have said.

  “It’s a tough industry, this is a bad idea,” they could have said.

  “We invested so much to get you over there, don’t blow it,” they could have said.

  “That’s great. Proud of you!” they actually said.

  I love them for that answer.

  In the very next performance I tried to re-create the moment. The widow gave me the red silk shirt, I slipped it on and said ssssssssssss, and waited for the magic. Nothing happened. No tears. No snuggling into a warm blanket on a cold Monday morning. Nothing. The night after that I tried again. Nothing. Every night I tried to feel the same magic. Nothing. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Everything I needed to learn from that moment, I had learned. It showed me the path to my future. But now the moment had passed. I am not sure the audience could tell the difference; I felt that they were still with me every night during that scene. But for me, I couldn’t re-create the same magic within. That happens in life, where a brief, fleeting moment can change us forever, and as hard as we try, it cannot be re-created. And just as hard as it is to re-create, it is harder yet to let it go. To this day, after all my acting endeavors, I have never been able to re-create what I felt that night. Maybe that is the dream I am really chasing. That and an Oscar.

  The Rose Tattoo did get nominated for ACTF, so we boarded a plane and returned to my old stomping grounds of Boise, Idaho. We were back in the same hotel, we performed on the same stage, and we were about to get adjudicated by the same crusty old gargoyles.

  This year, though, things were different. I now had actual friends and no longer had to quarantine myself in my hotel room; in fact, I had the beers in my room and invited people to join me. I had graduated from Mike’s Hard Lemonade to actual beer. I still remember how lonely I had felt as a freshman, so I threw hotel parties that brought everyone together—all my friends from Portland, even strangers from all the other theater programs. I finally felt like I belonged. That year was also different because I was nominated individually as an actor, and I would be competing against actors from twenty-five different colleges. I had to perform a monologue against four hundred other competitors. Based on these monologues, the adjudicators would send two of us to Washington, D.C., for the nationals.

  I performed the “Tangled Up in Blue” monologue from the play by Brad Boesen of the same name:

  . . . You asked me why I never stayed very long with the women I’ve dated; it’s you. Because of you. Because I didn’t want to settle anymore. I’ve been doing it all my life, and I didn’t want to settle. . . .

  And every woman I met, every one, I would compare them to you, and they weren’t you. They just weren’t. And I refused to settle until . . . until I knew one way or another.

  So don’t tell me that I’m just drunk, or that I don’t really feel the way I feel, because I’ve had four years to think about this, and I know how I feel.

  It wasn’t quite the ssssssssssss moment, but I still felt really good about my performance.

  But what about those gargoyle adjudicators?

  After all of us had finished our monologues, and after the applause faded and the crowd thinned from the auditorium, once again, as before, we changed out of our costumes and patiently awaited our judgment.

  The doors to the auditorium opened. The judges entered. They looked just as I remembered: these ancient pillars of pretension, all of them bearded, all of them wearing suspenders. They looked like Santa Claus if the role of Santa Claus was being played by Satan. I imagined that when they opened their mouths they would breathe fire. Were they the same judges as before? Maybe, I don’t know—all white people look alike to me.III

  “I have a question about your monologue’s . . . realism,” I imagined the first judge saying, looking at his notes. “Would you really speak that way to a girl, COOONEL?”

  Or maybe a judge would look at his notes, adjust his glasses, and say, “I know from your words that you were speaking to a girl, but for me, I couldn’t feel that girl.”

  Or perhaps a third would say, “Your Indian accent just wasn’t believable.”

  But what actually happened was this. One of the evil Santa Clauses looked at his notes, looked at me, pronounced my name correctly, and said, “Kunal, when you are able to make every person in the audience collectively release an audible awwww in unison, you’ve achieved something very special. Congratulations.”

  I was headed to D.C. for nationals.

  * * *

  I. Actually this really was an edge: I was probably the closest thing our school had to Sicilian.

  II. Some would disagree.

  III. This is not a joke. All white people really do look the same. To me.

  Kunal’s Twelve Quick Thoughts on Dating

  1. MEN SHOULD USE THE WORD ADORABLE.

  Women love it when men say words like adorable, ideally in an adorable accent. Here is a list of word substitutes that women find charming.

  If you like something—call it adorable.

  If you think someone is pretty—tell her she’s gorgeous.

  If you want to talk about your bowels—always use the word poop.

  Don’t say you like sex—say you like making love.

  Use these words early and often—moral ineptitude, primarily, morality, and lovely.

  2. BE HONEST.

  But not too honest. Don’t tell her too much. On the first date, you don’t have to tell her about the time you went skinny-dipping with your mom. But do tell her that you like skinny-dipping in general.

  3. WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK QUESTIONS.

  This always works. Always. Whenever the date is going poorly just start asking questions. For example, “How do you feel about kissing on a first date?”

  4. NEVER DISCUSS POLITICS.

  Because liberals and conservatives have traditionally never enjoyed having sex with each other.

  5. YOU CAN KEEP IT SIMPLE.

  I never understood why men couldn’t just go up to a girl, ask her name, ask if she was having a good time, where she was from, and if she would like a drink. Instead, they opt for something like this: Walk close enough to a group of girls, order a round of shots, and say, “Yo, son, let’s get a round of lemon drops and drop it like it’s hot; where the honeys tonight, y’all?”

  I’ll tell you where the honeys are tonight, my friend: they are hanging out with guys who don’t sound like you.

  6. DON’T BE LATE.

  That is not cool. Ever.

  7. THE MAN SHOULD PAY.

  It’s just the way that I was raised. I once went on a date with a woman who was nine years older than me, and we went to a French creperie. The bill was $28.06.
She seemed really into women’s rights and I was trying to be all progressive-like, so we split the bill exactly down the middle and each paid $14.03. Not impressive. If you are going to split the bill on a date, at least round it to the nearest integer.

  8. DON’T WAIT TWO DAYS TO CALL SOMEONE BACK.

  I know every single advice column in the world says “Wait two days,” but if you wait two days, to me, that means that I’m not important to you. So why wait?

  9. ALWAYS MAKE THE EFFORT.

  Don’t be afraid to bring flowers because of how you’re going to be perceived. I’ve never met a woman who didn’t appreciate flowers. In fact, I’m a man and if you brought me a bouquet, I would be impressed.

  10. NEVER FALL FOR THOSE PEOPLE SELLING ROSES.

  You know those guys who come by your table and try to sell you roses? Yeah, it’s a scam. One night on a date, while maybe a little drunk, I paid a hundred dollars to buy the entire bouquet. Why?

  1. I felt bad for the guy working so late on a Saturday night.

  2. I thought if I bought the entire bouquet he could stop work for the night and go home to his family.

  3. I really wanted to impress my date.

  4. Maybe I was a lot drunk.

  Not ten minutes later, the same guy came back with an entirely new bouquet! The ass-clown’s car was parked just down the street. He was driving an Audi. Three Series. The Audi was full of flowers.

  He bought that car on the tears of all the men he had duped into buying those damn roses. Me included.

  11. MANNERS MATTER.

  Don’t smack your lips when you eat. And girls, when we open the door for you, don’t say, “Why are you doing that, do you think I’m too weak—because I’m a woman—to open the door myself?” We’re just trying to be polite.

  12. CALL HER “DUDE.”

  If all else fails, call a woman “dude,” repeatedly. It will confuse her, it’ll throw her equilibrium off balance, her mind will be blown, and she will sleep with you.

  Holiday Traditions Part 3: Holi

  Holi (HO-lee): n. Indian holiday known as the Festival of Colors or the Festival of Love.

  HOLI CELEBRATES . . . WELL, ACTUALLY, I don’t really know what it celebrates, maybe something about good and evil, but it’s my favorite Indian festival because basically it is when people get together and drink bhang, which is hash in liquid form, and get high as kites. Then we smear each other with dry colored powder and shoot each other in the face with water cannons.

  India is always a very colorful country, but Holi is India on steroids. It’s an insanely raucous occasion in every city, on every block, a party with frequent, startling, wet explosions of red and yellow and green. You can’t leave your home without getting soaked from head to toe with color.

  We fought Holi wars (ha) with our neighbors, and I was always a big wussy. One year I tried to sneak up on the neighborhood bully with some guerrilla warfare tactics, lying low on the ground behind him, and when he turned around I squirted him in the face. . . . His eyes grew wide as he revealed a huge water balloon he had been saving to hit me with. He pelted that damn balloon at me, hitting me right on the nose and blasting green all over my face. I ran all the way home screaming and crying.

  “Look at what he did to my face!” I sobbed to my mother, which is hilarious because everyone’s face was smeared with color.

  “What a crybaby,” she said laughing.

  She was right.

  Holi (HO-lee): n. 1. Indian holiday known as the Festival of Colors or the Festival of Love. 2. Unofficially, the eve of India’s national day of laundry.

  Nina, Why?

  WHEN YOU FINISH COLLEGE AND you’re crazy enough to want to be an actor, you basically have four options:

  1. Move to New York and start working.

  2. Move to Los Angeles and start working.

  3. Stay in your current city and start working.

  4. Go to graduate theater school.

  I would have chosen options 1, 2, and 3 in a heartbeat, but truthfully, I just didn’t feel like I had all the skills it would take to be a professional actor. So I chose option 4. I needed to get better. In the ACTF nationals I had won a couple of awards and caught the interest of a pretty good agent and I felt that I could do a couple of things well. I believed I had a decent command over my comedic timing, but found it hard to connect sometimes with scenes that required me to dig deep and access my emotions. I wanted to expand my range as an actor. I was worried I would become a one-trick pony. I needed to add more tools to my bag.

  So when I was a senior I flew to Chicago, where at the downtown Hilton hotel I would spend an entire weekend of ball-busting auditions for grad school. By analogy, these are roughly equivalent to an NFL draft combine, where the nation’s top recruits throw footballs and run routes and wind sprints for NFL scouts, and if you flub your workout you won’t get drafted. Except in this one you have three minutes to perform.

  You perform for three minutes onstage in front of a crowd of forty-six people. Every person in that crowd is the head of a graduate theater department. And in those three minutes, actually, you perform a ninety-second comedic monologue and a ninety-second dramatic monologue. That’s it. If you perform for three minutes and one second, you’re disqualified and you can kiss grad school good-bye. You so much as blink and it’s over.

  For my comedic piece I played Moth from Love’s Labour’s Lost, and for my dramatic piece I stuck with what had served me well at ACTF—Tangled Up in Blue. It seemed obvious to play to my strengths. I’m always baffled when actors choose to audition with a monologue where they play a rapist, or a child molester, or a serial killer. Or pick a monologue where they spend the entire time screaming at the audience. Why wouldn’t they pick something that makes them likable? After all, these theater schools are investing in you for three years, so you don’t really want to scare them away.

  Casey, the brightest star of our theater program, did her auditions a little before me.

  “I sucked, I sucked, I sucked,” she said when she came back to the hotel room.

  “I’m sure you didn’t suck,” I said.

  She handed me an envelope. The envelope. This envelope gives you the entire list of schools that liked your monologues and want to interview you. There are forty-six schools total. Casey was a talented actress, so I guessed that she would be selected by at least seven schools, maybe eight or nine. (Personally, I would have been happy with five.)

  Casey showed me the envelope and I saw . . . one. Only one school wanted to interview her. Are you kidding me? She was such a wonderful actress. I had looked up to her throughout college.

  “Kunal, you’re up,” someone told me.

  I made my way to the stage, trying to ignore the fact that this was easily the most important three minutes of my life. I remembered what my mother had told me as a child: Acknowledge the crowd, Kunal. I knew that the second I said a word they would start the clock and my three minutes would begin, so instead, before I started speaking, I took a long, deep breath, and I smiled a big smile at the audience. This was my way of letting them know that I was happy to be there. That I appreciated the moment.

  After my audition, I sat outside nervously awaiting the envelope. It had gone well, I thought. A few minutes went by. I swear I could hear the tick-tock of my wristwatch. Then I heard my name and an old professorial-looking lady handed me a white, legal-size envelope with my name on it. I stared at it, terrified to open it, feeling that sucker punch of anxiety that every high school student experiences when they open the mailbox to find a letter of acceptance (or rejection) from college. I went into the bathroom of the Hilton to open it alone.I

  I opened the envelope.

  Twelve schools wanted to interview me.

  Yes!

  Shit.

  Yes!

  Shit.

  The good news was that twelve schools is a lot of schools; the bad news was that it was so many interviews—all back-to-back-to-back—so as a matter
of pure logistics, it would be difficult to attend all the interviews at the hotel without being late. And I’m never late. So with a pen and paper, I drew up a floor plan of the hotel and figured out how I could use the emergency stairwells to avoid the crowds at elevators and optimize all the routes. (Raj would have been proud.)

  I made every interview on time. I was most impressed with Temple University, a school that only accepted eight students once every three years.

  If I was accepted, it would mean that I would live in Philadelphia, which is close to New York and might give me a shot at Broadway. If I was accepted, it would mean a full-ride scholarship. If I was accepted, it would give me another guaranteed three years in America.

  I was accepted.

  And then I wasn’t.

  In the same week I received two very different phone calls. The first began, “Kunal, congratulations, Temple University would like to extend an offer of admission.”

  Then the second call came.

  “Kunal, there’s a problem.”

  “Okay.”

  “The university is not allowed to give a scholarship to anyone with a GPA below a 3.3.”

  “But my GPA is 3.3,” I said.

  “Your GPA is 3.26.”

  I had done enough math to know that 3.3 – 3.26 = .04, which is essentially a rounding error, a number so small, so arbitrary, that it’s the difference of one class being a B instead of a B-plus. I pleaded with Temple’s admissions department—and after two painstaking weeks of groveling they finally said, “If you write a personal letter to the dean of the university, maybe they will take that into consideration.”