He would also leave me unbelievable voice mails ranging from “We need to partner you with a nonprofit. I can get magazines to publish pictures of you doing charity work,” to “I’m going to send you a list of actresses who are up-and-coming. Let me know who you want to have dinner with so I can call the paparazzi and get some photos of your date in the tabloids.” Was this how Hollywood publicity operated? I was always eager to invest in something that would get me more work, but this kind of stuff, what do you call it?—lying—wasn’t for me. I let the publicist go.
With no real press to get no real jobs, those five months of living expenses didn’t turn out to be much of a safety net, so I eventually needed to return to some temporary gigs. And I suddenly found that I couldn’t get the kinds of day jobs I had relied on before. Production houses were hesitant to hire a somewhat-recognizable actor in an assistant role, because they knew I’d leave as soon as I got more acting work. And the service and retail industries wouldn’t hire me in coffee shops, clothing stores, bars, or restaurants because they said I could potentially hold up business. “You won’t be able to take orders as quickly if a customer turns out to be a fan.” Apparently nobody wanted people’s lattes getting cold if I was stopped and asked which special effects were used to light my back on fire in Van Wilder.8
Most people would think, Harold & Kumar was a hit! Now it’s on to fame, fortune, and fancy cars! In real life, it was more like, “Harold & Kumar was a hit! Now you’re not allowed to work at Jamba Juice.”
That was real life: I was living the dream, but I was too recognizable to land a day job and too financially strapped to know if I would make rent in a few months. So, you can imagine my relief when Spilo told me I had an audition for the supporting best friend role in an upcoming Ashton Kutcher film called A Lot Like Love.
One of Ashton’s friends was initially set to play the part until a bigger part in another movie came along for him. With the role open, they thought of me for the audition because the casting director’s assistant happened to be my good friend Lauren Grey. Finally, nepotism opening the door in my favor!
Completing Harold & Kumar allowed me to skip the first round of auditions and go straight to meeting the producers and director. Lauren greeted me in the waiting room and introduced me to the team: her boss (the casting director), the producers, and the very affable British director Nigel Cole. As Lauren videotaped, I read the audition sides. Nigel gave me a few character notes, and I read it a second time. Things seemed to be going well. Until…
“Kal, we’d like to see you do it again… this time with an accent.”
It was Lauren’s boss.
“Oh… the character has an accent?”
This was totally unexpected. I was reading to play a guy named Jeeter, Ashton’s character’s friend and business partner, who sells a company in a massive deal, charms a woman on their flight home, and buys an expensive car. Nothing in Jeeter’s background indicated he might need to have an accent. The script was well written on its own.
I wanted to tell everyone in the room to fuck off and just walk out, but I knew Lauren vouching for me was why I was in there to begin with. I quickly glanced at her for guidance, and from the horrified look on her face, knew she had absolutely no clue this might have been coming.
“Sure. What kind of accent do you want?” I said, staring at British Nigel. “I can do British… Scottish, Brooklyn, New Orleans…”
The casting director interrupted. “Obviously, Indian is what we’d like to hear.”
I read the scene once more with an Indian accent. A still-mortified Lauren looked sullen as I finished up and left.
As soon as I got to the car, she called. “I’m so sorry, Kal. I don’t know what the fuck that was about. There was never any conversation about this character having an Indian accent. That was so racist. I’m so sorry. Nigel didn’t even know that my boss was going to ask you to do an accent. They don’t want this character to have one. You were great, and they’re going to call Spilo to offer it to you later today. I just had to call to say I’m sorry. That was really fucked up.”
“Wait, I got the part?! No accent?”
“You got the part, definitely no accent.”
“Hell yeah!! Thank you!! And yeah, I don’t know what was up with your boss, but that was really lame.”
Shooting A Lot Like Love was a wonderful experience with very nice people. Nobody mentioned the audition incident on set, although Lauren and I will often reminisce about it. (She’s now a casting director in her own right, and still very horrified about that day.) Ashton was an absolute gentleman, as was Nigel. And the quick scene in which I woo and charm the woman on the plane follows me around to this day. The part of that woman was played by a young fellow up-and-comer named Meghan Markle, and from what I remember of that enjoyable day of filming, we were as friendly as two actors of color with small roles could be.
* * *
A few weeks after my short stint on A Lot Like Love, I got an offer for a supporting role in Jamie Kennedy’s next movie, Son of the Mask.
Jamie is an outgoing stand-up comic, with a perfect command of bizarre characters and ridiculous situations (like the time he played a waiter who had his mouth wired open and drooled on everyone’s food on his hilarious prank show The Jamie Kennedy Experiment). We initially met on the set of Malibu’s Most Wanted,9 and we hit it off so well that when I booked Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, we asked Jamie to play a weird disheveled guy in a suit who pees on a bush in a forest next to Kumar. So, when Jamie was set to play the lead in Son of the Mask, he recommended me for the role of Jorge, a computer techie.
The part was pretty straightforward. Jorge was just there to support Jamie’s character, in scenes spaced throughout the movie. My salary would cover a few months’ rent, I’d get to spend some time with my friend, and the film was shooting in Australia—a place I hadn’t been and sounded exciting!
* * *
I landed in Sydney, took a quick shower, and went to my first rehearsal. I was greeted by the cheery director. He was short and—not to be a dick about it but—smiled a lot in a stupid sort of way. If there was a sound to go along with this director’s grin, it would be one of those old Warner Bros. cartoon dogs, uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. This guy had a lot of energy. He wore two large hearing aids, a faded T-shirt, and comfortable-looking jeans with running shoes. My first impression of him during the audition was that he had a boring personality, which is rare for someone in a creative leadership position. This was confirmed once we sat down to go over the role. Because, as if this was the most goddamn brilliant genius idea any human had ever come up with in his life, he excitedly said, “So… I decided that Jorge should have an Indian accent! Uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.”
This bullshit again.
I put on a game face and did the three things I had become accustomed to doing in these situations: 1) Ask why my character needs to have an accent even though I knew the answer (because it would make it so much funnier!10), 2) Offer to instead help make the character funny on the merits of who he is, and 3) Pitch any number of other accents I could do besides Indian: Boston? Yiddish? Australian?