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When I first met Kumail Nanjiani, we were on set on the X-Files, chasing down the shape-shifting Were-Monster. Since then, I’ve seen Kumail undergo his own transformation — into a leading man and big-screen superhero, playing memorable characters with depth, heart and humor. Only, he doesn’t always see it that way. We chat about his love of the X-Files and how he’s recently found new ways of approaching his life, relationship and career with more presence and joy, rather than stressing about the outcome.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

David Duchovny, Kumail Nanjiani

David Duchovny  00:00

The first time I met Kumail was on The X Files reboot, and it was a Darren Morgan episode. And he’s a tremendous writer, and it was a great script, the curse of the where something, where, monster, I can’t remember exactly, but I knew Kumail had done a podcast on The X Files, which is, how he got, you know, came to the attention of the writers. And one of the things I’m proud of on The X Files is Chris Carter and company hired really good actors. So we had, you know, Shia LaBeouf on the show before he was Shia LaBeouf, we had Lucy Liu on the show before she was Lucy Liu. We had Ryan Reynolds on the show before he was Ryan Reynolds, and we had Kumail. I mean, Kumail was already Kumail, but I’m always so pleased when I see people that we worked with, or people that I’ve worked with on whatever I’ve done, when they come in at the beginnings of their careers, even though Kumail had already been working for a while. But I’m always so kind of gratified when people come on and did great work as unknowns on whatever show I’ve been doing, and then I see them soar afterwards. So Kumail is one of those. I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Kumail Nanjiani is a comedian and an actor. You might know him from his roles in the comedy series Silicon Valley or the Big Sick. Big sick was a romantic comedy he made with his wife, Emily, based on their relationship. They’ve been married since 2007 and have worked together on and off over the years. We talk a lot about his relationship and his art and the nexus between those two things. He’s also a big X Files fan, as I mentioned. And we’ll discuss as much as I don’t want to. We will discuss that bottom line. Kumail is a he’s a great dude. He’s really funny, and someone I’ve got to know a little bit over the years. And I loved this conversation and made me realize that I’d like to be more in touch with him as we go forward. So here we go.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  02:18

How’s it going, David?

 

David Duchovny  02:19

It’s going well, how are you?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  02:21

I’m great, lovely to see you.

 

David Duchovny  02:24

See, it’s been, it’s been a while, yeah, five years, huh?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  02:30

Yeah, something like that, before covid, I think.

 

David Duchovny  02:34

And I do have, other things I want to talk about with the X Files, especially, you know, your conception of American culture. I don’t know if you watched it before you moved to the States. I don’t know what the timing was, or, you know, if that was your conception of America and all that stuff. But, you know, you’ve done, you’ve done a podcast, and one of the things I realized as I’ve gotten into doing this podcast, is I’m not really that interested in other people. I mean, I thought I was before I did the podcast, and it’s really cured me of that delusion about myself, that I’m that curious about other people, because here I am just wanting to talk about myself. And I thought, oh, you are the fantastic guest, because you actually had a podcast about The X Files, and I was like, oh, this is the perfect excuse for a narcissist and egocentric person like me, and to just open it up in the beginning and say, please ask me any fucking thing you want to about The X Files. Because we never, really I mean, we did that thing on the set. You know, if there was anything that you ever wanted to tie up in a bow on your podcast that you didn’t get to.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  03:47

I mean, there’s a ton of stuff to answer your question. I did watch it in Pakistan, and yes, my conception of America was that it’s full of aliens and people who can control people with their minds and all that.

 

David Duchovny  04:00

So honestly, you’re saying this is what you thought you were coming to?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  04:05

Honestly when it was first promoted there in Pakistan, they said based on true stories. So I thought, yeah, so I started watching X Files in Pakistan, probably right when it, you know, a little bit out it came out here in 93 so that would have been like 94 or something. I started watching it immediately, and I was like, oh, my God, the world is so interesting. I truly thought I understood there were dramatizations, but I truly thought it was based on true stories, because that’s how they advertised it. When you saw the, you know, the it would say the truth is out there. And then they added a graphic that said based on true stories right after that. And so I thought it was real. But for me, the show was perfect because I had the big, I was big into aliens and stuff before that, and immediately fell in love with the show. And to me, you know, I’ve rewatched the show many times since then. And really the thing that I think is kind of miraculous about the show, and it’s not miraculous, because nothing is. It’s always work and, you know, thought and and all that. But the relationship between Mulder and Scully is really a relationship that I’ve never seen on TV. I know there were people who wanted it to be romantic. But the reason it was interesting was because of the tremendous amount of you could just there was a lot of depth of feeling between you two, not necessarily, I’m not even talking about romantically, yeah, I saw a thing recently that went around that you said, I don’t know what interview it was, but someone was like, so when you’re like, looking at her, are you thinking of, you know, romantic feelings, and you’re sort of like, no, when I’m shooting with her, I’m looking at her to be like, I wonder what she thinks of this. And that’s the sexiest thing there is. Do you remember saying that?

 

David Duchovny  05:56

No, but I remember thinking that was an interesting thing that we were doing, was that, when we were beholding some craziness, you know, something on the show, that the first response was to kind of look at one another, and not, you know, like, what are you making of this? It was, there was a trust there, or an equality there that was, you know, I guess we just discovered it over the years, I don’t know that was directed or something that we discovered but, yeah, I know what you’re talking about.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  06:28

So in the beginning, you didn’t sort of go in realizing, like, okay, my relationship with this other character is going to be sort of the the emotional through line of the show, the beating heart of the show. It wasn’t like that. It was something that you sort of discovered as you were working.

 

David Duchovny  06:42

I think so, and it’s instinctual like all the best decisions are instinctual, right, as an actor and probably as a person. But what, I got to, I think, the earliest kind of matchup in my head that I was going for was, and this is going to sound odd, but let me continue through it, because, I’m going to say because I grew up with a mother who I needed to amuse, in a way, she was a sadder kind of a person, and my job was to make her laugh and to amuse her. And the Scully character was rational and, you know, all business, and I realized that I was in that position of amusing her, you know, that I wanted to amuse this woman. And that was kind of, and that wasn’t even conscious. That’s something that I thought of much later, you know, like, oh my god, there was, I was doing that thing, you know, I was trying to make my mom laugh. You know, in many ways.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  07:44

That was exactly what my follow up question was going to be. Because you’re in your 20s, do you have that at that point? Do you have that understanding like, oh, one of the most important relationships of my life was trying to make my mother laugh, and I should bring that to this, but it really feels like it was a lot more instinctual. It was one of the modes you had as a person, and you were able to sort of deploy it in the service of this relationship in this show.

 

David Duchovny  08:07

Yeah, is that something that you relate to as a child, as the son of a mother and as a funny person.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  08:15

I, it’s interesting, that’s an interesting question, because my family, I come from a very funny family, you know, that really values being funny. So my dad makes a lot of jokes, my mom makes a lot of jokes. It’s just a lot of laughter in my family, not just my parents, like my extended family, everybody’s really funny and wants to be really funny. And I kind of went the other way when I was a kid. That sort of in some ways shut me down, because I couldn’t really compete with all these voices. So I never thought of myself as a funny person until I got to college, until I sort of got away from my family, and then I sort of realized that all the stuff that I’d grown up with was a part of me. It just hadn’t really come out because, you know, not that everyone’s competing for the stage, but in a way, I just felt like I couldn’t hang with these people who were always making jokes, and this wasn’t, it was not their intention to shut me up or anything. But I will say that everyone who knew me until the age of 18 is shocked that I was a stand up comedian and that I’m an actor and that I had a podcast. I was very.

 

David Duchovny  09:22

I’m exactly the same. I was very shy, I was I was quiet, and I can completely to relate to what you just said. Now, when you started doing stand up, did you get calls from relatives? Were like, hey, that was mine, you know?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  09:39

Yeah, I mean, I remember we were shooting this movie The Big Six. This was, you know, years after I’d already been doing stand up, but my mom and dad visited on set once, and we shot a scene with my screen mom and dad, and we were doing a take, and halfway through, my mom shrieked and laughed so loud that she ruined the take. So, and I went over, and I was like, hey, mom, what’s going on? She’s like, I said that to you, and that’s in the movie now. And I had forgotten, you know, because I’d written that scene a couple years earlier, and now it just became, become a piece of dialog in the movie, and I’d forgotten that I got that from my real life so, yeah. It took them, honestly, a long time to sort of understand the choices I’d made the stuff I wanted to do, because it doesn’t make any sense, right? Choosing to be in this business is objectively a bad decision to make, if you look at the number of people who have any level of success, or even people who are able to make a living, it’s an infinitesimal number, so to my parents, who are ultimately very practical people, it didn’t make any sense to me that I had chosen to do this, but they were always supportive of it, because they knew, you know, I was a good kid growing up. I got good grades, I never got in trouble. So they understood that I was making this decision, not that this was not a rash decision I was making, that I had sort of considered this very carefully, or more likely, that I just had no choice in the matter. And I think that’s true. I just didn’t feel like I had any choice but to pursue this. And now my family obviously loves it and gets a kick out of it and contact me about every little thing that they see me in. But I think for a long time, it was weird for them, and for that reason, they didn’t really contact me every time like it felt to me for a while, in the beginning, that my family wasn’t really paying attention to my career.

 

David Duchovny  11:36

And what did that feel like to you in the moment? Did that feel like freedom, or did that feel like neglect?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  11:42

It felt somewhere between those. It certainly did not feel like freedom. It felt like it hurt my feelings. It made me sad. I wanted them to watch what I was doing, and I wanted them to enjoy it and be proud of me for it. And I think it took them a while, even though, you know, my dad is a very emotionally expressive person. I think, you know, for a lot of people, their dads aren’t I’ve seen my dad cry many times. He’s a soft, emotional person. I still think it took them a while to figure out how to say to me that they enjoyed my work or that they were proud of me. I think it just took them a while. There was a learning curve with that, and I completely understand that it’s a, you know, it’s someone that you’ve known your entire life, and now the relationship changes a little bit. I think that’s ultimately the weirdest thing about having parents, is that they go from sort of being your parents and these superheroes who know everything to peers in a certain kind of way, right, they sort of become your friends, in a way the relationship has to completely change. And everybody goes through that, if they’re lucky.

 

David Duchovny  12:50

But there’s always that kernel. There’s always that kernel that remains that you’re always that child inside. And I think for me, my father was less like a present part of my life when I was an adult. But my identity up until 23 or 24 was just as an academic kind of achiever. So when I said, after having, you know, succeeded at this in the system, you know, this academic system, and I never said, I’m going to be an actor. I just started acting. Started trying to pursue it, because I didn’t have the balls to say I’m an actor. I just, I didn’t even know what that meant, really. So I felt like my mother, I think she was concerned. And then I took on this concern. There was something superficial about what I was doing, you know, and I wonder if you had that same thing, not just superficial, but what, what was my need to do that? What was driving me? And did I interrogate that need enough to know that it was something that it was worth basing a life and a career on, or just something that was a lack or something that I wasn’t giving myself. If you know what I’m saying.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  14:13

No, I know what you’re saying. I honestly did not have any introspection about pursuing this. I genuinely didn’t. I didn’t feel a sense of guilt over pursuing it because I said all the other stuff that I would be doing. There are plenty of other people doing it, you know, for me it was, I was like you and that until, you know, all through college, my identity was good student. I study, I got good grades. This is what I do, and so when that was going away, I didn’t I never wanted to go to grad school. I really didn’t know what I would study. And so that structure was being taken away from me, that structure of I do good I get good grades, and that’s what life is. And so I think, sort of a panic set in, being like, well, I. Got to be good at something.

 

David Duchovny  15:03

To be good at something.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  15:05

Wow, that’s, I was in therapy today just talking about that. I mean, you know, there’s like a thing where just being isn’t enough, right? You ideally want to be like, just me, being me is enough, but you don’t. You want to at least, I don’t want to see you, but me, it was never enough. I think in a certain kind of way, it was an intellectual fear of mortality, that thing of when I’m done with all this, I want to leave something behind that’ll last beyond me. And now, now that I’m older, I understand that very few of us get that, and even the ones who get it don’t really everything is forgotten a few years after you’re gone. So I think for me, it was this idea of, I want my life to matter once I leave. I want there to be something of me that’s left behind. I think that was the original impetus for me.

 

David Duchovny  16:01

And how did you see that thing? Though, you saw that thing as being, I’m going to keep on making people laugh from beyond the grave at first. That’s what you’re thinking, which is such an interesting kind of motivation. I’m going to be a ghost that makes people laugh. Okay, that kind of a cool ambition. When you think about at some point, it also turned into, I want to make emotional performances that make people feel, you know, so it went, you know, it’s like this illusory kind of goal line keeps on moving, which is great. You know, as your soul matures, or whatever the what you your ambition changes. And I just, I find it interesting that as a young man, a very young man, you were already thinking about death, though.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  16:49

I was thinking about death, but I wasn’t feeling about death. I honestly wasn’t one of those people who was always worried about you know, I was talking to a friend last night who said since the age of 10, he’s been worried every night he thinks about himself dying. And I think a lot of people have that experience. I didn’t have that. I actually emotionally did not reckon with the idea that I would die. Until last year, when my cat got sick, I understood.

 

David Duchovny  17:19

Wait, you made a movie called The Big Sick you wrote it, you acted in it, which was you didn’t reckon with it during that though.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  17:27

No, not really, not my own death. You know, I’d never felt my the feeling of my own death, until last year, when this thing that I love so much got sick, and I was like, oh, someday I’m gonna die. And that feeling, the feeling of feeling like I’m gonna die. That’s the first time it hit me, and it really changed a lot of the ways in which I approach my career and my life in general.

 

David Duchovny  17:51

Can you elaborate on how it changed you, the way you approach your career and what you’re gonna do? And, I’ll just throw in something I was told once about dogs, and I’m sure it can apply to cats, but I was told once that dogs are here to teach us how to die, you know.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  18:09

Oh, yeah. I mean, it does apply to cats. I really feel that, you know, I really feel that. The way in which it felt it changed my the way I look at it was, well, I’ll tell you everything. So I’m 46 now, and up until, you know, I assumed that when I hit 40 there was going to be some crisis. Didn’t really happen. Didn’t really happen till I turned 45 and I turned 45 right around when my cat was sick, because part of me in my head was like most people lived through their 80s. So you know, 43, 44, 86, 88 that’s doable. Once I hit 45 I was like, okay, most people don’t live to 90, so more than likely, I’m more than halfway through this journey, that, coupled with my cat getting sick, that’s what really hit me the way it changed how I approached my career is and again, this is like you talking about how you realized years later that you were trying to make your mother laugh in order to make her feel better. This is also something that I realized somewhat later. A lot of the decisions I made regarding my work were results based. So when I would look at something and decide whether or not I wanted to do it, my main calculus was based on, is this going to be something people watch? Is this going to be a hit, stuff like that, you know? And the adjustment I made was, I can never control that. I can never predict that. All I can do is try and give myself an experience that’s worth having. That’s all I can do. So if I get a script and I read it and I’m like, I love this script, I love this other actor, there’s really no way. There’s a good chance nobody ever watches this thing. But it doesn’t matter to me, I want to be there in that room, doing these scenes with this person. So that’s kind of how I changed it, you know. And this year, the work that I’ve gotten to do has just been based on stuff I wanted to do, rather than having you be based on some sort of prediction of success, which is impossible to begin with.

 

David Duchovny  20:19

Yeah, I can relate to what you’re saying there. I mean, I just the past year, I wrote and directed a movie, and I did a movie with Meg Ryan, and I had wonderful experiences doing both, and neither of them did much business to speak of, you know. And I have to hang on to the experience of it, you know. And the my innate sense of the quality of the work and the inspiration of the work that happened, which I know for sure is there and that, as you said, you know you’re you were laying down these videos of you for posterity. You know I’m going to live on beyond that. These things, they stay alive in the ether. They’re patient. I realized this when I started writing books. It’s like, because I’ll find books that are 50 years old that I and, oh, my god, yeah, why haven’t this isn’t a, you know, it’s been patiently waiting there on in the library, on them. So these movies, these shows, these performances, they can be more patient than us, you know, and we can take solace in that fact as well.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  21:23

Oh, that’s very beautifully put. They can be more patient than us. I mean, certainly, you know, I totally, I was just talking to my therapist about this today. I was like, I have something I’m in that’s coming out. How do I disengage from how it’s gonna do? Will people watch it? Will people like me in it. I mean, I think I understand that’s a very natural reaction. You want praise a praise feels good, and the opposite feels bad. But how do I have it not have so much power over me that’s sort of the active, you know, project of my, of my life right now?

 

David Duchovny  21:59

Well, I talk a lot about failure on this podcast. And the prevailing kind of consciousness of failure in the culture now is, you know, it’s a step on the way to success, you know, which makes it part of success, really, and not a failure, you know. But what I feel in my gut and what I’m getting to reading, talking to people, is there not an intrinsic value to just failure? You know, forget about, like, oh, I learned by doing this that I shouldn’t do that. And then I became a raging success because of that. But no, the humility, that comes with failure and the face to face that it makes us do to these, these illusions that we’ve created about ourselves as these successful whatever we are, when, in fact, we’re all just failing every day together in this meaningless kind of chaos, you know.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  22:59

It’s so true, I never have thought of that, that failures value in our current culture is how it contributes to success. And it’s not, it’s, you know, it’s like, doesn’t matter how many times you fall it’s how many times you get back up, when really it’s like, maybe just lay there and be comfortable with laying there, you know, and being really with yourself, rather than the illusions of yourself that you’ve convinced yourself, are you that’s so so true.

 

David Duchovny  23:54

You know, I wanted to ask you, you know, because you were raised in a religion, we have to find ways to give our lives meaning, and we have to find ways to find humility. Whatever religion does, it gives us humility, because we have to be subservient to a God, right? And I think it’s the most one, maybe the most important characteristics that we can get to as humans.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  24:15

I mean, that’s exactly what I was sort of getting at earlier. You know? The reason I do this is a search for meaning. What is my purpose? I think a big part of why I do this, or why I started doing this, why I do this now, has gotten more complicated, but why I started was a search for meaning, what am I? What is the purpose of my life? What do I call myself if I’m not, this other thing that had given me purpose for everything that’s gone well, what the fuck happens now? You know? So I think that was a very, very big part of why I started pursuing comedy. And it was the same as you David, I wasn’t, I never, didn’t call myself a comedian. I was like, I’m doing comedy. I didn’t have the hubris to call myself a comedian, yeah, so the reason I started doing this was that now it’s changed a little bit in that I sort of, I realized the purpose of my life is just to be with my wife. I think that truly is the purpose of my life now to like, really reveal myself to her, be as vulnerable to her as I can, and allow her to get to know me as much as I can and get to know her as much as I can. I think that is the project of my life. It’s not quite as you know celebratory as dying and leaving a series of works behind you that are going to change people’s lives while you’re a ghost. It’s not really that. It’s just, I think it’s a little bit my attempt at trying to just be more present in my life. And think of, you know, I think sometimes people think of like life as starting at some point later on, where really life is happening right now while you’re waiting for your life to start. Is your life, and so for me, I really feel all this other stuff I get to do is great. It’s not the main event. You know, the main event is hopefully growing old with this person.

 

David Duchovny  26:18

Well, that’s beautiful. And some and is sincere, and I honor that what you just said, I would ask, is there a way in which your work reveals yourself to your wife, becomes part of your relationship? Can it be?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  26:38

I think it certainly can be. We really decided a few years ago that both our careers are both our careers. So when I go and do a job that’s us, and when she writes something, that’s us too, and the a concrete way in which I guess that happens sort of is I’ll get a script, I’ll read it, and I’ll say, I don’t know why they thought of me for this. I don’t, I don’t think I could do this. And she’s she will read it and be like, No, I think you could do this, this little scene here that you don’t think you can get to. I’ve seen it, and you you can get to it. I think she takes a tremendous amount of joy and pride in my work. There’s truly no one who believes in me more than her. I genuinely mean that that’s not just like a thing to say she thinks I can do things that nobody else in the world thinks I can do, including myself. So I think it’s the other weird thing, David, about this is, in some ways acting as therapy. You are exploring like parts of yourself, and then those parts, in some ways, become accessible to you. And I found, until a few years ago, so much of myself wasn’t accessible to me, and in doing acting and playing other characters, putting myself in other situations, I’ve learned I’ve gotten to know myself so much more, and been able to really access more of myself, and I think that makes our relationship deeper and better. I realize I have things inside me that I think the hardest thing for me in this relationship has been the parts of myself that I don’t like are parts that I don’t need to hide from Emily. That’s been the hardest thing. In fact, trying to hide the parts of myself that I don’t like just give them more strength and actually communicating them and owning them and communicating them to Emily actually is much healthier, and that those parts of me that I don’t like. There’s no reason for me to not like them. They’re just natural. They’re parts of me. And they all come from all all different kinds of, different kinds of things.

 

David Duchovny  28:51

They probably had uses at different points of your life, you know, and they, they remain within you, just because that’s the way it goes. You know, I went through a thing where, you know, it’s, I was dealing with some therapist. It was like, Well, you know, that’s a, some kind of a defense mechanism, you know, that you don’t need anymore. But you can, you can, you can thank that. It’s like an ogre, you know, it’s like, it’s like, you’re a personal Dragon, you know, you don’t need it to fight anymore, you know.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  29:17

That’s right.

 

David Duchovny  29:18

So how do you thank it? And say, well, here’s a leash too, you know, by the way.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  29:23

Yeah, exactly like, hey, you’ve done your job. We don’t need you anymore. You can go take a nap now. I think for me, a lot of it, a lot of that stuff, comes from the math of religion. You know, because religion is so concerned with good and bad, right? You’re a good person. If you do this, you’re a bad person if you do this, you’re a bad person if you think this like one concrete example I can give you is feeling like a bad person, because at the age of 11, I started looking at girls differently, and, you know, feeling like something was wrong with me because I’m having these thoughts, for these women, just having those thoughts is wrong, and I’m just a little kid, I’m competing with the very force that has ensured the survival of our species. You know, it seems really unfair to demonize the very thing that’s led to us being here. And so, so I always felt since a little kid, because of that, that there was something wrong with me and that I was a bad person trying to hide my badness from the rest of the world, because I saw Cindy Crawford in a Diet Coke commercial, or whatever it was, and it made me feel certain things, and I’m sure it made everyone in the world feel.

 

David Duchovny  30:39

Yeah, you really want a Diet Coke, I think is what.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  30:42

I really it made me very thirsty. David, I was parched. So I think that’s where that started, that feeling of, oh, there’s something bad inside of me, and my job is to hide that from the rest of the world. So to me, the big project of, oh, these parts of me that I don’t like, there’s no reason for me to not like them, and I should share them with the person I love most in the world. And I do think that’s made me a better husband. It’s made me less anxious in my life. It’s I still have a lot of work to do.

 

David Duchovny  31:15

Yes, I love that as a program, but like, how do you deal with the shame of I know this is not a winning part that I’m sharing with you right now.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  31:24

Yeah, well, with Emily, I’m very fortunate, because she used to be a therapist. She’s not a practicing therapist anymore, so she’s just genuinely, really interested in people’s bad parts, whatever that means. So she just likes that stuff. It makes her, makes people more interesting to her, and so if I share something that I’m tremendously ashamed of, I could see she gets a little bit like, giddy about it, not enough, and completely non judgmental about it. She’s just like, it’s so interesting the way your brain works. Because, you know, we have these worlds inside our own head that don’t really have anything to do with reality. We think of the way people think of us, and we’re completely wrong, like, you know, I’m sure you’re wrong about the way people, you know, perceive you, at least I certainly am. You know, people see me a certain way, and it’s different from the way I see myself. I today was talking to my therapist about work, and she was like, You should treat yourself like you’re your own coworker. And I was like, Oh, my God, that would be so good, because I treat my coworkers really well, but then to myself, I can be tough, you know?

 

David Duchovny  32:39

Well, what does that sound like when you’re tough on yourself, what does that look like if I was watching you work? I mean, I have watched you work, but I can’t remember. Was a while ago, you know, and I’m sure when you were doing The X Files, you must have put a lot of pressure on yourself.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  32:52

I did, and honestly, that’s I don’t I wish I had done and I’m not looking for anything. I genuinely wish I’d approached it differently and done a better job there, because I was very scared. Put a lot of pressure on myself. I kind of choked myself out, which was what I used to do. And, you know, still can sometimes do over, prepare, overthink, over, determine what the scene should be, instead of, you know, now I think of preparation as a platform like you do all that, and I do prep a lot, but that’s the platform. Then when you’re there, let it go it that’s that’s all it is. See what happens off that platform, you know? But I felt like, when I did the X Files, I was kind of stuck in that platform because I didn’t want to let you guys down. I didn’t want to let Darren down, I didn’t want to let Glenn down. I didn’t want so much elf down.

 

David Duchovny  33:42

It’s so funny because I remember, you know, having met you, and I’m watching it, I’m thinking, you’re really good. And I’m thinking, God, he loves the show. He probably really likes what I do on the show.I hope I can, like, be the molder that he wants me to be.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  34:04

Remarkable, my God, see the way it’s so amazing, the way your brain sort of does that stuff to you. I remember standing there our first scene, I think, that we all did together, the three of us is in the middle of the night, and we’ve just seen you’ve gotten there, because the monster just got away, and I’m holding like a big net, and I remember having that because I’d met you. You were very kind, you know, I’d met Julian, very kind. And I just was standing there, and I was like, oh, I’m talking to Mulder and Scully now I’m not talking to the actors, and I definitely had a weird moment there.

 

David Duchovny  34:44

Yeah, it’s, in some ways, I think I’ve always liked to go into work as the underdog. I always liked that.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  34:51

Me too.

 

David Duchovny  34:52

Almost partly, because I started late, partly because, as I told you. You know, I didn’t think I had any kind of family support about it, you know, I, and my God, I needed to have, like, a chip on my shoulder. And also because, you know, like you, like you said, I was shy and I wasn’t. Nobody would say, you know, back in the day, like, if they knew me at 13, 14, 15, like that, that kid should be on the stage. You know, look at all the energy, whatever. It’s like, it’s like, nobody would have said that. So I always felt like, I’m gonna, I gotta prove him wrong. They’re not expecting anything. So when I come into a situation like with you, where I this guy’s got a podcast on the show. I mean, he loves us. I hated that. I hated it.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  35:38

I mean, that’s so wild that you’re saying all that I can’t believe you are I have the exact same thing. I walk into every job with a chip on my shoulder, like, let’s fucking see what you know. I’ll show them what I can do. I have a question. So you said, you know, when I watch you on the X File, and I’ve seen your work before that. You know the movies you did before that, I always see someone who really knows himself. You know like I feel you sort of showed up knowing the things about you that are appealing as an actor. You just have always felt confident to me in that way. Have you felt that way about yourself. I was talking to my friend Nick Offerman a couple days ago, and he said that he didn’t realize until, you know, many years into his career, that who he is is valuable. That he described himself as, like, I’m like a slow talking guy from, you know, middle America who doesn’t know, who doesn’t know like fancy books, and he realized that that was a strength and not something to run away from. And he realized that his inherent essence is what’s interesting about him. So watching your work from the very beginning, I see someone who understands himself in that way. Did you? Did you have that experience of yourself or or was it not like.

 

David Duchovny  37:04

I could answer that in two ways. It’s and I thank you for the question. It hasn’t been asked me, and so I’m going to try and answer it, you know, as honestly as I can. One is, I felt I had something, some thing I that was valuable, As Nick said, or marketable or watchable. Let’s, let’s call it watchable. I just knew I was trying to express something, and I wasn’t trying to do what other people necessarily were doing. You know, I wasn’t trying to imitate anybody. I was trying to do my own thing.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  37:42

That’s so good, and that’s such a, I will say, valuable understanding to have about yourself, because so many people start off trying to imitate someone or do what they think people want, from the thing, when really the hardest thing it took me, the longest time to learn, is what you are is the most valuable thing.

 

David Duchovny  38:02

But then I had to get, you know, so the consequence of that was, I was like, you are never going to see me acting. You are never going to see me. You’re never going to catch me acting, you know, I’m always going to be real. I’m never going to push. And then it took a certain amount of success, and then a certain amount of confidence to actually go back to before the beginning and go, this can be just fucking fun, you know? This can be just a performance. I didn’t let myself have fun. I treated it like a job, you know? And it is a job, but it’s also very fun.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  38:37

It’s very fun, so you would say that even when you were doing X Files, like the heyday of X Files, you wouldn’t have said, this is fun, the work itself is fun.

 

David Duchovny  38:47

Well, that was, it’s different in the sense that schedule was brutal, you know, so it physically, it was hard to have fun because you were just so, just so tired. I mean, we were talking about 10 months, you know, of 14 hour days, you know. So it was just like, ah, you know, but, you know, but when the bell rings to lock up the set and in between, You know, until they yell, cut, yeah, that’s fun.

 

David Duchovny  39:43

I would just touch upon briefly. You know what you said earlier about your life being almost a mission to unfold to your wife? In a way, it’s a very humble ambition, and I don’t humble in a bad way, where I think of as failure, as giving us humility, not humiliation. And that’s another thing, the ideas of of what the society, or what society has always put on being a man, and what being a man is. And I think that that’s it might be an interesting way to go into your experience with the Eternals, you know, and your and your kind of conception of being a hero, a superhero, you know, literally. And I wonder what that process was like for you.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  40:34

Yeah. I mean, I was very, very excited to do it, and I found the entire thing, honestly, a turning point in my career in terms of, we were talking about fun, right? I’ve always felt going into every job this tremendous sense of anxiety, and am I going to be good enough? Can I do this? What are the lines? How am I going to say this word, that kind of stuff, you know? And I realized going into Eternals, doing a movie with Selma Hayek and Angelina Jolie, and it’s a big Marvel movie, and Chloe, Chloe Zhao was directing it. I was like, if I go in with that, this movie is going to flatten me. It’s going to squish me under its weight. So I decided I am going to have fun every single day on set. This is going to be a joyful experience for me. I’ve been watching these movies since I can remember. I love sci fi, I love superheroes, and so I went in with that attitude and genuinely, one of the best work experiences I’ve ever had. I really that’s and then, since then, every job I’ve had, whether it’s been in serious, intense, 14 hour days, whatever it is, and those are very, very hard, I found overall, every experience to be joyful because I’ve been focusing on the fun part, the make believe part, the getting to explore yourself, getting to explore it with someone else who’s also tremendously good At this, to me, that’s the most exciting thing so, and that’s the movie where that turned where I went from like, oh, I better be good to oh, this is going to be really, really fun.

 

David Duchovny  42:10

Well, it’s one thing to make that decision, or to try to make that decision going in, it couldn’t have been that smooth. You must have had moments where you’re like.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  42:22

Sure, there are moments, but really, for me, it was kind of like, it’s like, you know, this is weird. I don’t know if there’s a great analogy. I was a smoker for years, and I quit many times, but the last time I quit, I knew I was never gonna smoke a cigarette again. Like, I just knew immediately that’s kind of how it was when I chose joy. Chose to have joy in my work. When I made that decision, I felt this weight lift off me. And obviously there are moments where you choke a scene out, or you put too much into it, or you’re like, Oh, I better not fuck this up. This person I’m acting with is so good. All that stuff for sure. But soon as I made that decision, I felt like this darkness leave my shoulders and it wasn’t as simple as that, but it kind of was a little bit as simple as that. It’s also easy in a movie like that to keep remembering the joy and wearing a superhero outfit everyone around me is wearing superhero outfits. We’re pretending that monsters are attacking us. I’m pretending I can shoot things from my hands. I’m doing a big Bollywood musical. I mean, if you can’t have fun doing that, then you’re not gonna have fun doing anything you know, I truly had a completely joyful experience. And then, with regards to the manhood thing, you know, that’s interesting. I found that the biggest issue with me and how I thought a man should be, and it’s very surprising, because my father was not like this. For me, men are never sad and men are never scared, and men even happiness. You know, if you go to like a sports game when they’re happy, it turns into aggression, right? Anger is the only manly emotion that’s like, what’s okay expressing so you’re sort of squishing everything else down, and it’s coming out as anger, which is okay, because anger is strength. I think it’s the opposite. You know, really, I think anger can be weakness. And I think saying that you’re sad or scared is powerful. I think that’s real strength. So I think when I was talking about what is considered like manly, I wasn’t talking about any kind of physical trait or anything or mostly, I was talking about this that being in touch with your own emotions, and expressing them is not considered manly and in playing that character and playing that superhero, I did want that part of I wanted him to be someone who understood his own emotions, because he’s been around. He’s eternal. He’s been around for 1000s of years. He understands that he’s processed in that way.

 

David Duchovny  45:03

He said 3000 years of therapy?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  45:05

Yeah, he’s had 3000 years of therapy, that’s right, so I wanted that, and in playing a character like that, really for the first time, someone who’s in touch with themselves and their emotions. You know, Chloe wrote a thing in that right before, and people are still sort of baffled by it. Right before the big battle, my character says, I can’t. I don’t want to fight that guy. I love him too much. And I and I leave, and people are like, wait, are you going to come back like Hans Solo? No, that’s not what Chloe wanted. Chloe wanted to show that there are no real winners in war, and that she always said to me, she’s like, your character is the only one who’s right in this movie. But then you put it on a big, you know, been a big popcorn movie, and people are like, wait, why did you just leave that makes no sense to me. It makes a tremendous amount of sense. And so for me, that’s the kind of masculinity I wanted to portray is that someone who looks in many ways like a traditional action hero, action figure, kind of man, you know, he’s buff, but then he is okay saying these complicated things to him that don’t come from his intellect, but that come from his feeling And from his gut and from his instinct, that’s what was exciting to me about that character. Oh, that’s

 

David Duchovny  46:25

fantastic. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and I see that completely. So you gladly just step into that world again. Oh,

 

Kumail Nanjiani  46:34

for sure. You know, I think to me when I look at work now, I just want to do something I’ve never done before, like that is truly the only criteria I have. And so if I get an opportunity to play another superhero, but I can do something different, do something I’ve never done before, or do something together that I’ve done separately to me, that’s completely worthwhile so.

 

David Duchovny  47:03

So if it’s something it’s if it’s something that scares you, if it’s something I mean what you’re saying, and I’ll, you know, try to wrap it up. Is what I often think of with this podcast, is that success is actually the cage. You know, when you do something that is a howling success, and then you’re just trapped in that thing forever, you know? And then that’s right, nothing better than failure to move you forward, you know.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  47:31

IIt’s so true. I feel like positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement are the same exact trap. Good feedback, bad feedback, exactly the same thing. I did a show recently, and I’d been doing work with therapy to not have the results of my work affect me too much. And I got nominated for an Emmy for it, and the amount that made me feel good was very scary. I was like, oh, all that work that I’m doing hasn’t really made a dent, because this feels too good. And it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing, how good it felt.

 

David Duchovny  48:06

I don’t think you need to be embarrassed. I mean, I know what you mean. Did it matter? Does it matter that you win, or does this matter that you nominated?

 

Kumail Nanjiani  48:18

It doesn’t matter that you wait until the moment before they say the name of the other guy.

 

David Duchovny  48:23

Shanley, had this line, I forget he was winning an award, and he said, You know, I’m going to butcher it. But it was like, all I can say to the people that have lost this award is, I’m only going to feel better for 10 more minutes than you.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  48:38

How great is that?

 

David Duchovny  48:41

It’s been great talking to you. I’m sorry that we haven’t spoken in so long, and I, I really applaud the way you’re going about your career and your life. And you know, I think it’s, it’s a beautiful vector, you know. And I look forward to seeing, you know, what comes out of you along this trajectory, you know, as you’re figuring it out, and I you know you’re alive and you’re questioning and you’re, you know, you’re doing all the things an artist does, you know, and it’s just like, hey, my hat’s off to you.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  49:11

Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, I’ve been a fan of yours for a very, very long time, and I just have always found you to be a very thoughtful person. You know, you really think about this stuff, like, why do I do this? And I think that makes you a truly great artist. So it’s, you know, I genuinely, it’s a pleasure and an honor that I get to know you in my life, truly.

 

David Duchovny  49:36

I appreciate you giving us the time.

 

Kumail Nanjiani  49:39

Of course, thank you, thanks for talking to me.

 

David Duchovny  49:51

Okay, my thoughts after speaking with Kumail Nanjiani what a nice guy. Okay, I was thinking like he said that, you know, the the the kind of direction of his life at this point, his ambition is to make his relationship with his wife better and better and more intimate. And I couldn’t help thinking like every man just hates you right now, like you’re making us all look so bad. But it was a beautiful thing to hear and to say and to admit. You know that it’s so rare in this culture that people say my relationship is the most important thing in the world to me. When why not? Why not? Why the fuck not? You know, certainly, has affected me and does have to just be the relationship with your your partner. You mean relationship with your kids. You know relationships, the idea of ambition in a relationship, success or failure. You know to want that relationship to grow, you know, to actually feel like that’s a masculine ambition. What a wonderful thing, what a different thing.

 

CREDITS  51:18

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias  . Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Kate D. Lewis, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny, I mean, the company dammit. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. Special thanks to Brad Davidson. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny, you know what it means when I say at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.