by Kunal Nayyar
“Ah,” I said, “I’m not sure. I don’t really know what’s going on.”
“Want me to teach you?”
“Ya-hah, pleeze?” I babbled.
So Professor X kindly explained the rules of rugby to me as we watched the game together.
Sir Patrick, if you’re reading this, please do allow me to return the favor anytime with badminton.
After returning from England I had to face a sober reality: my lack of any legal immigration status. If something didn’t change—soon—I would be forced to head back to India. The government, as you can imagine, does not dick around when it comes to visas. The window was getting smaller every day. I had nine months left on my current student visa, and then that would be it. If I wanted to stay longer, and I did, I would need to apply for a special visa that’s called the “O” visa. A visa that is described as being for “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability.” No shit, that’s what it’s called. It makes us immigrants sound like mutants. Ha, a mutant immigrant, that’s a superhero I would cheer for. Imagine: immigrant by day, superhero by night, fighting to stay illegally in America since the first Bush administration. Basically if you want to be an Alien of Extraordinary Ability, you have to give proof that the work you are doing in your field is superior to what an American can provide in the same field. Translation: An off-Broadway play wasn’t going to cut it. I needed something big. I needed to do something like land a blockbuster movie or a TV show.
At that precise moment, God wasn’t dropping gigs like that from the sky. Life is different when you’re not in college. Suddenly you don’t have the easy-to-follow road map of class, lunch, class, dinner, internship, class, school play, nookie, midterms, school play, nookie, brunch, hooky, finals, repeat three times, pick up diploma at graduation. My only real employment prospect was a low-budget play premiering in Los Angeles called Huck & Holden, by Rajiv Joseph. It wasn’t a sitcom. It wasn’t a movie. And it probably wouldn’t impress the Lords of Visas. But at least it was a start. Plus I read the play and found it brilliant—it’s about an Indian guy who falls in love with a black woman, and to woo this lady he has to channel Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. An actor friend of mine was originally booked to star in the play, but when he had to drop out—scheduling conflicts—he suggested me for the part.
My friend talked me up to the play’s director, a woman named Claudia Weill, and I decided to give her a call. I was in New York City at the time visiting cousins and figuring out my next big move. Was I going to try to stay in New York, move to Los Angeles, or go home to India? Given my visa status, these questions needed to be answered soon. I heard that Claudia was in the city, too, so I figured at least I could see her and audition. I made the call.
“I hear you’re looking for an actor?”
“I’d love for you to audition.”
“Great. Where should I meet you?”
“Actually, I’m not in the city right now. I’m in the Hamptons for a couple of weeks.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing what the Hamptons were.
“Do you have a computer?” she asked.
“No.”
“Do you have access to a computer where we can do an iChat?”
Despite my years impersonating a computer lab manager, I still wasn’t that savvy with things like iChat. (This was 2006, long before FaceTime was invented.)
“No one I know has a computer with iChat,” I told her honestly.
“Okay, here’s an idea,” Claudia said. “Why don’t you go over to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue? The new one, it looks like a huge glass box. Go there and use one of their Macs to do a quick audition for me.”
What?
“Just to be clear,” I said, “you want me to walk into the biggest and most crowded Apple Store in the world, stand in front of one of their computers, and use iChat to audition for your play?”
Pause.
“Sure. I think that’s the best option.”
“Great idea. I’m on my way there now.”
I spent an hour prepping for the part, and then took the 6 train to Midtown, where, along with about two billion other people, I squeezed my way into the Apple Store.
The store was crowded as balls and I couldn’t find any open Macs. It was as if all the tourists in New York had simultaneously descended upon the Apple Store to check their email. I pushed through the crowd and looked for an open spot. Nothing, nothing, nothing—there! I found a desktop in the corner.
I fired up iChat and called her number.
Some kid answered. It was her teenage son, who helped set up the computer.
“Hello, thanks for doing this.”
“Hello?”
“HELLO?”
“Can you speak up?”
“Wait, I can’t see you—”
“Is that your connection or mine?”
“HELLO?”
“KUNAL, ARE YOU THERE?”
“CLAUDIA?”
“KUNAL?”
Finally, after ten awkward minutes of scrambled connections, she could hear me and I could hear her. The store was loud and I didn’t have any headphones, but what other choice did I have?
I stared at her on the screen’s tiny window.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s see what you got.”
I probably should have been nervous about the crowd of people behind me, a throng of international students who were watching me perform. But then I figured they probably didn’t even speak English. Suddenly there were no tourists, no Genius Bar employees, no kids on Facebook—just me and her. I must have learned something in grad school. I delivered this emotional monologue (the climax of the play) in the middle of the store with so much passion that I began to cry. I finished the monologue and wiped my tears.
Another pause.
“I want you to come to Los Angeles and play this character for me.” Before I could respond she continued, “I can only pay you seven dollars per show, and there will only be thirty people in the audience at every performance. But I can tell you that a lot of people in the industry will be watching.”
Hmmmm. I mean, I did like the play. A lot. But this would require moving across the country for . . . seven dollars per show? You make more than that at Taco Bell, and there at least you get free chalupas.
“Can I think about it?”
“Sure. Let me know first thing tomorrow morning.”
Dazed, I pushed through the ocean of people and I left the Apple Store. There was only one person who I needed to speak to right now. It was 2 a.m. in New Delhi but I called him immediately. C’mon, pick up, pick up, pick up . . .
“Are you okay?” my father asked.
It was a reasonable question, as you normally never call someone at 2 a.m. unless you’re 1) not okay or 2) drunk and you want to sleep with them. Neither was the case right then.
“I’m fine, Dad. I was just offered this chance to be in a play in Los Angeles.”
I told him all the details, especially the part about how it paid only seven dollars, would only have an audience of thirty people per show, and how it clearly wasn’t an important enough performance to impress the Gods of the Visa Office.
Without hesitating my father asked, “Do you have any other offers?”
“Huh?”
“Is anyone else offering you a chance to work?”
“No.”
“Then go.”
“It’s that simple?” I asked.
“Kunal, what’s the point of weighing the pros and cons if you only have one option? There’s nothing to think about. Move to Los Angeles.”
Classic Dad. He always had—and continues to have—the best perspective. So often in life we agonize, we deliberate, and we beat ourselves up to carefully evaluate the reasons we should or should not do something. But usually it’s so much simpler. If you have no other offers, take the one offer you have. He wasn’t concerned about the money. I had been living off my earnings from working in Washington, D.C., and Stratford, but they were
wearing thin. He told me that if I needed money in LA, I could just get a job there. That’s what people do. They pick up the pieces of what they have and move on. Civilizations were built on this very principle.
My parents had set up a support system for me where I couldn’t fail. Success wasn’t defined by income or status or becoming famous. That wasn’t important to them. What was important to them was my happiness. They’ve always told me that if things don’t work out for me in America, I will always have a home to come back to. What was important to them was me not turning into an asshole. Sometimes people say, “Wow, Big Bang Theory—your parents must be proud of you.” I like to think that they were proud of me before Big Bang. They don’t care that I’m an actor. They just care that I’m their kid. And a happy one at that.
The next morning I accepted the job.
I was on my way to LA.
* * *
I. Which is also famous as the birthplace of Kunal.
The Waiting Period (Extended Mix)
HUCK AND HOLDEN WAS BEING staged in a theater in east LA. If you know anything about LA geography, you will laugh at my decision to stay at an apartment in Santa Monica. Even though it is only twenty miles away, at seven dollars a show, my broke ass couldn’t afford a car, so every day I spent four hours on the public bus system. I shared a one-bedroom apartment with this very sweet albeit manic-depressive girl. I was sleeping on the couch but paying half the rent, which in hindsight may not have been fair.
During one scene in Huck and Holden, a library of about five hundred books crashes to the ground, which meant that every night after the play, an intern at the theater would spend two hours cleaning up the books and arranging them in neat little stacks. I didn’t have any friends yet and I was desperate for company, so, after each performance, instead of going home to my lonely couch, I stayed at the theater and helped stack the books.
“Kunal, you don’t have to do that,” said Claudia, the director.
“Oh, I’m happy to help,” I told her, not admitting that I simply had nowhere else to go.
Claudia was a lady of her word: It was true that the production only had thirty audience members each night. But it was also true, as she had promised, that the crowd was full of industry nabobs. On opening night, the curtain went up and I could see Michael Lynton, the president of Sony Pictures, in the audience. (I had heard he was coming and googled his picture.) He was sitting next to John Lithgow. And there was Tony Shalhoub. And Denzel Washington. Holy shit, she’s the real deal.
The play was a success. But I needed to make some real money to survive in LA. I combed Craigslist for jobs and I came across a listing for Gerardo’s Raw, a raw food restaurant. They were looking for waiters. Most actors in LA wait tables, because it allows them to make cash at night while leaving their days open for auditions. Since I’d never really had experience waiting tables, I was surprised when I got a call to interview for the open position. I had no clue what raw food was, but I showed up for the interview with a big smile on my face nevertheless.
“Do you like raw food?” the owner asked.
“I love it,” I said. “Raw means you cook it without oil?”
“No. It means there’s no cooking. At all.”
“Um. Yeah. That’s what I meant. No oil. No nothing . . .”
For reasons known only to them, they hired me to wait tables on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. (I couldn’t work the rest of the nights because of the play.) Suddenly I was around people again and soon I felt right at home. I befriended the owner, Gerardo, who hung around all day wearing tiny shorts and no shirt.I I became particularly close to Diego, an energetic guy who had the whitest teeth of any man I had ever seen. I marveled at his zest for life. He had two jobs: he woke up at five in the morning to cook breakfast burritos for a beachside shack, then he cooked fish tacos there for lunch, and then, at 4 p.m., he came to Gerardo’s for the dinner shift, where he made raw cacao milk shakes and chopped all the vegetables for the salads. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, two jobs, four shifts, not one complaint.
Diego took a lot of pride in his work. “Come eat my fish tacos,” he told me one day. I could tell it meant a lot to him, so I decided to join him on the pier at his little beach shack. It overlooked the ocean, and we each sat with a fish taco in our hand wrapped in tinfoil. We cracked open a couple of Coronas.
“Eat,” he said, eagerly awaiting my approval.
I took a bite. I closed my eyes. I felt the crunch of the breaded fish, the spice of the salsa, lime, cilantro, sour cream, a hint of jalapeño. “Diego, best fish taco ever.”
That was music to his ears. He released a loud laugh, his head tilting to the sky. “I toldju, mang!” And he began to devour his own fish taco, shredding it, making these loud lip-smacking noises. I had the impression he was enjoying his taco much more today because he got to share it with someone.
I reached for my Corona as the sun was just getting ready to go to sleep.
I washed down my taco and looked over at Diego. He was quiet. Enjoying the sunset.
“I have to go to work,” he said as he got up to go.
That was it. That was his moment of elation. A fish taco, a friend, a beer, and a sunset.
Every night a guy came in who looked like he had just walked out of a WWF ring. He always wore a suit with a turtleneck instead of a shirt, rocked sunglasses indoors, and had long blond hair that someone later told me was a wig. Zane. What a guy. He always came in alone and sat at a corner table, scribbling in his notebook. “Is Diego here?” he’d ask every night. “Can you ask him to make my milk shake Diego-thick?” (Diego made the thickest chocolate milk shakes. This became a running joke between us: “His milk shakes bring all the boys to the yard.”)
Zane drove to the restaurant in the most insanely beautiful cars; it seemed like a different one each time: Ferrari, Jaguar, Porsche, you name it. But my personal favorite was a yellow Lamborghini. Ever since I was a kid in New Delhi, I’ve associated real success with driving a yellow Lamborghini. When you’re a little kid you measure success by the accumulation of big, shiny toys, whereas when you’re an adult, you learn the real measure of success: the accumulation of big, shiny toys.
The buzz from Huck and Holden had begun to spread. It helped open doors for me. I only had nine months left on my student visa and I knew it was imperative that I get an agent. Claudia had helped me get a few meetings with some of the bigger agencies, even though I didn’t have many TV credits under my belt.II A lot of them said no, they couldn’t represent me, because they were worried about my visa; in nine months, I could be sent back to India.
No, no, no, no.
And then, suddenly, out of the blue, not no.
Thursday: Met with a smaller agency. Clicked with an agent named Suzanne right away. She liked me and I liked her.
Friday, 11 a.m.: I was called in to sign papers with this agency.
Friday, 1 p.m.: Suzanne, my new agent for all of 120 minutes, called to say, “Kunal, we’ve got you an audition for a new pilot. It’s for a new Chuck Lorre show.”
“Oh, that sounds great,” I said, not really knowing who Chuck Lorre was.
“The audition is on Monday,” she said. “I’ll send you the sides; you’ll have the weekend to prepare.”
“I’m going to book it for you,” I told her, smiling.
I’m going to book it for you.
We both laughed—who the hell did I think I was?
I didn’t really have confidence that I would book the role, because frankly, I didn’t even fully understand what was happening. I was just delighted to have an actual agent send me on an actual audition for an actual TV show. This lack of experience helped me. I was loose. I didn’t know enough to grasp the importance of the moment and get nervous.
When I got the script for Big Bang, I read it and instantly loved it. For all the reasons lots of viewers love the show, I love it, too. Sharp writing. Engaging characters. The part they wanted me to audition for was, o
f course, a character named “David.” Yep, Raj was originally named David Koothrappali, and even though his last name sounded Indian, they were not looking for any specific ethnicity. I mean, when I walked into the audition it literally looked like a lineup for the new United Colors of Benetton campaign.
I had the weekend to prepare for this audition, and I went deep into my bag of acting tools. I broke down the character of David; I dissected him from every angle. Let’s start with the accent. In the script he could have been from anywhere, but I knew that a lot of my strength lay in the cadence of my dialect, so I decided to make him from India proper, and not just from India, but fresh off the boat. I imagined what my New Delhi accent would sound like if I were only a year or two removed from India—maybe how I’d sounded as a freshman in college.
I researched David’s signature personality trait, selective mutism, and read up on the underlying psychology. I learned that selective mutism is a disease that stems from pathological shyness. It is a real thing. So, what renders someone speechless? It’s not that Dave is dumbfounded. He’s trying to speak. The research says that your brain is sending a signal to your mouth, but somewhere along the way, you emotionally block your mouth from making words. And I thought, Okay, what would make me, Kunal, selectively mute? I imagined meeting one of my idols, such as the legendary cricket demigod Sachin Tendulkar. If Sachin happened to turn up one night when I was working at the raw food restaurant, what would that physically do to me? I knew that my mouth would open and my mind would have a thousand things to say but nothing would come out. I would probably tense my shoulders and my jaw, tighten my butt cheeks, dart my eyes back and forth to avoid contact, and try to become as small as possible, like a tortoise who doesn’t have a shell. And what if Sachin was always around me? Well, that would be Dave with selective mutism.
On Monday, instead of taking the bus, I treated myself to a thirteen-dollars-a-day rental car, and I left so early for the audition—three hours early—that I drove forty miles in the wrong direction, called Suzanne, had to make a U-turn, and I still made it there on time. (Kids, if you ever want anything in life, always be early to meetings.)