Director Original Ideas McGee had a predictable response: “No, that wouldn’t be very authentic.”
I raised my voice a few times about why I didn’t want to play this role with an Indian accent before saying to myself, You know what, I just wrapped Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. I didn’t do A Lot Like Love the way the casting director hoped. I don’t need to regress into a role with a reductionist accent, and I don’t need to waste my energy getting upset. I sent Dan Spilo a straightforward email: “Please call production and have them fly me home, I’m obviously not playing a role like this. Sucks to lose the money, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll be in my hotel room packing and will be ready to roll to the airport ASAP. Thank you.”
We were supposed to start shooting a week later, and out of respect to my friend Jamie—for whom I wished success—I wanted to make sure Original Ideas McGee could cast someone else who was okay with the stereotypical accent he wanted. Surely there were other brown actors for whom this could be a way to break out of the Brown Catch-22.
Then my phone rang. It was Dan.
“Bad news. The studio is saying if you left, you’d be in breach of contract since they flew you to work in Australia already. This really isn’t worth damaging your reputation over. It sucks, but you need to stick it out and do the character the way they want.”
“Damage my reputation? I’m not the asshole telling an actor to do some racist buffoonery because I’m not talented enough to come up with something better!” I was pissed. “Dan, I’m not fucking doing it. I’ve had it with this! I’m not breaking My Middle School Me Rule!” I hung up.
Reality set in with a call from my lawyer: Getting sued for breach of contract was a big deal, often designed as a deterrent. The studio could go after me for millions of dollars, which obviously I didn’t even have. I had to suck it up and do the accent.
* * *
Once we started shooting I made it a point to perform as light an Indian accent as possible. I’m talking barely noticeable. No way was I going to give them a full Apu. If these guys weren’t going to let me leave, I was at least going to fight creatively for a somewhat-grounded character. Maybe over time, the great chemistry that Jamie and I have could shine through.
We did a few takes of the barely noticeable accent on my first day, and Original Ideas McGee yelled, “Cut! Kal, I don’t think I heard an accent!” He lifted his left hand to cup his ear just behind the hearing aid. “Did you do one?” The way he did this reminded me of Portly Pete, the older guy with hearing aids who sat next to me at my pre-college telemarketing job, exasperatedly asking, “What did he say? I can’t hear shit!” any time Skeezy Big Bird and Sad Joe Pesci made a speech. For a moment, I thought about my day on that job, and how awful it felt working for shady guys who lied to old people all day long.
This gave me an idea: I could lie to this buffoon.
ORIGINAL IDEAS MCGEE: Did you do the accent?
ME: Of course I did—this accent is so funny!
ORIGINAL IDEAS MCGEE: I didn’t hear it, Kal! Make it thicker and louder in the next take!
ME: Of course, of course! You’ve got it, boss. I’ll make it thicker and louder!
We did another take. Instead of thickening my accent, I made my eyes much wider and bobbed my head the way other white directors had asked me to do in the past. Original Ideas McGee saw my minstrel nonsense and because he couldn’t hear well, assumed I actually made the accent thicker. He was very delighted. This went on every day: I would do a light accent → he couldn’t hear well and would ask if I was doing one at all → I would make my eyes wide without thickening the accent → he’d believe I was speaking with a thicker accent because he couldn’t hear well and was boring and a bigot and probably has a tiny penis. Uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
If you’re a masochist, you can force yourself to watch the DVD commentary of Son of the Mask and, just after the fourteen-minute mark, hear a very candid Jamie recount to Original Ideas McGee: “We would argue with Kal between takes because he didn’t wanna do an Indian accent. Because he’s like [bad Indian accent], ‘I am not trying to be an Indian,’ and he got so mad. We went, ‘Do it more Indian!’ He got really mad at us. And we would, like, say, ‘Just be Indian, it was funnier!’ Anyway, he got mad.”
Bottom line: It was super exhausting. When the movie wrapped, I went back to LA tired and frustrated. But I also had enough cash in my bank account to cover rent for a few more months.
* * *
With Son of the Mask mercifully behind me, I reconnected with John Cho back in LA. In addition to being an enthusiastic scotch drinker and talented farter, John is an avid reader. During production on H&K, he was horrified to learn that I hadn’t read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. He gave me a copy, and, of course, I loved it.
Lahiri’s book won the Pulitzer Prize—especially impressive because it was the first she ever published. It’s a moving collection of short stories, most of them set against a backdrop of immigrant challenges, her beautifully crafted characters living with one foot in two worlds.
Her next book, The Namesake, came out shortly after, and John and I read it around the same time. It’s an emotional coming-of-age story about an Indian couple and their American-born son in Boston. It easily became one of my favorite novels. I loved The Namesake for the same reason I loved Catcher in the Rye—I wasn’t a rich New England boarding school kid, but Salinger’s writing was so vivid that I felt like I was Holden Caulfield.11 Gogol, the lead character in Lahiri’s novel, was written so beautifully, so intimately, that I needed to play him in a film adaptation of the book.
John and I tried to get the rights to turn The Namesake into a movie, only to find that someone else had beaten us to it. And that someone was… director Mira Nair. Mira Nair, you’ll remember, was the woman behind Mississippi Masala, the film that pushed me toward a career in the arts in the first place. She’s who I stood in line to see on UCLA’s campus one day, so I could hand her my headshot and résumé.
We couldn’t have been happier at the news: Who besides Mira Nair could do justice to a beautiful book like The Namesake? Adapting novels into films is a time-consuming process, so I made a mental note that she had the rights and figured I’d hear from my agent whenever the movie was casting.