The guys shut me down hard. “Kal, the script goes out to the market next week. We are going to sell it to a studio. And we’re not going to change any ethnicities, or the spirit of the characters. We want to make Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, not David & Jason Go to McDonald’s.”
A week later, Hurwitz called me. They had actually done it: Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was sold to a company called Senator, with New Line Cinema distributing. Nobody asked them to change the ethnicity of the characters, and nobody would have to scrape together cash to fund the film independently. That’s because two junior executives at New Line (one white, one black, both young) were given the opportunity to green-light and develop a lower-budget comedy. This is what they chose. It was perceived as a business risk, but they understood the characters and the world being created.
I’m wrong about a lot of things, and this time being wrong about the sale of the Harold & Kumar script made me happy. Knowing a film like this would exist in the world felt like a huge leap of progress, whether I could ultimately be involved in it or not. (But really, I needed to convince them to let me play Kumar.)
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Just because I knew the guys who created the characters obviously didn’t mean I was going to be handed the part. The auditions for Harold & Kumar were lengthy. Casting director Cassandra Kulukundis extended an especially wide net, getting submissions from around the world: New York, Chicago, London, Toronto, Sydney, Los Angeles. With plenty of qualified actors hoping to play the lead roles, the process was tedious. Opportunities like this hadn’t just been few or far between for Asian American actors, they were nonexistent. This was the first. As the list narrowed, there were multiple rounds of callbacks held on the third floor of a black office building close to the beach in Santa Monica. Jon and Hayden were always there, along with director Danny Leiner, producer Greg Shapiro, and Cassandra’s team. As with most callbacks, the closer you got to booking the role, the more people it seemed were in the audition room.
The opportunity to play a protagonist in a hilarious buddy comedy was a big part of my dream. I had never wanted a role so badly, so I intended to focus everything I had on earning it. Cassandra had given me a few character notes during the earlier auditions, which I wrote in the margins of the script (also known as audition sides). I’d wake up, work on the audition sides, go to the gym, work on the audition sides, make breakfast, work on the audition sides, shower, work on the audition sides. I felt like Rocky, except with audition sides. And a super-average body.
My experience and formal training helped me focus, and I pushed through the first four rounds. The last round was a chemistry test, like the one I had with Ryan Reynolds and Facey McPainty for Van Wilder. It came down to three actors for Harold and three for Kumar. All of us would sit in a waiting room together for an entire afternoon. We’d get called in—in pairs—to see who had the best chemistry: each choice for Kumar reading with each choice for Harold. They were looking for their perfect couple, their Brangelina, their Bennifer, their Haroldumar.4
Only two of us would get the gig. We had all been through lots of the same stereotypical Hollywood nonsense. Though we were competing, it felt like the end result would be a net positive for all of us. It was inspiring to be in a casting director’s waiting room with these other talented Asian American actors vying for parts we knew we each had a fair shot at. Maybe I’d be too tall or too short in the end, but what a luxury that would be. My race wasn’t a disqualifier or a knock against me. There was zero risk that the parts could go to some guys in yellow or brown makeup.
Ultimately, I was cast as Kumar, with John Cho playing Harold. I’ll tell you guys a little secret that not even Cho knows as I’m writing this. Of the three choices for Harold, I felt the least chemistry with John in the audition room. This is such a ridiculous thing to have felt in retrospect. At the time, I was so in my head, I convinced myself that if they were to favor John for Harold then they’d go with one of the other choices for Kumar (and vice versa if they first decided I was the clear front-runner). Just goes to show you how completely insane actors can be. It turned out, Cho and I had the best chemistry. To this day, I have such deep love for that dude.
When it came down to getting cast, it wasn’t just my audition being marginally better that got me the role of Kumar. I’m not trying to sell myself short here—I gave a great audition and worked like hell to prepare for it. But so did the other guys. Part of the reason the role went to me is because none of the other prospective Kumars had been cast in a studio comedy before. I was the only Taj Mahal Badalandabad, and therefore perceived as the more professional choice.
My agents, of course, had totally predicted this. That’s why they pushed me to audition for Van Wilder. It’s why they called back after I hung up on them, and it’s why they encouraged me to build up a résumé and fight for auditions—even distasteful ones (see Hadji). It’s what Sonia Nikore meant when she advised me to work at making scripts funnier, pay my dues, and build a career. All of that advice had been true. Do I wish I had a time machine with a magic wand inside that could make us live in a world where the industry was fair and equitable, and I didn’t have to make those imperfect choices along the way? Well, yeah, obviously (mostly because that would be sick as hell, a time machine and a magic wand). But that world doesn’t exist. Without Taj, I wouldn’t have been Kumar. I don’t regret playing my cards right.
A week before we began production on the film, Danny Leiner invited us to a debaucherous party at his house in the Hollywood Hills. A totally wasted young blond woman I’ll call Rebecca slurred her way up to me: “Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii. I’m Ruh-BECCA, one of Danny’s good friends, and I jussssss wanna say I’m so glad he cast you!”
“Thank you very much, Rebecca. I’m very excited about it all. Can I get you a water?”
“Shhhhhhhhhh look. I saw the final-round audition tapes and I told Danny, I said mmmmmake sure… mmmmmmake sure you hire the hot guy to play Kumar, he’s very attractive.”
“Thank you. I’m flattered.”
“Ya, I said Danny don’t hire the other guy. That UCLA guy from New Jersey? Don’t hire him, he’s definitely not good-looking enough.”
Finally, I had the luxury of not being hot enough! And I managed to get cast anyway.
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