You Can’t Be Serious(50)

11?Damn, Sunny was good!

12?Yes.





CHAPTER ELEVEN NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE




The empowerment I felt at the audition just from something as innocuous as Mira Nair having an Indian American assistant really paled in comparison to what it was like on the set of The Namesake itself. It was so totally different from any other project I’d had the chance to work on. For starters, I hadn’t had the opportunity to be part of a creative team that paid such attention to detail. Every word of the script and each frame of each scene seemed stealthily commissioned. With a nominal budget, equally financed by American, Indian, and Japanese companies, the production wasn’t fancy. There were no big trailers or huge setups. Our dressing rooms were in a honey wagon: one long eighteen-wheeler subdivided into ten small, narrow spaces by thin, plastic retractable accordion blinds. Each narrow area had enough space for a small bench and one tiny toilet that doubled as a chair, but it was below a rod for hanging clothes, so you couldn’t actually sit on it. Didn’t matter. It was all you needed to prepare for each day’s scene work. Besides, Mira didn’t have a room like this. She didn’t even use a chair. On set, she just sat on a wooden box covered with a thin cushion.

As a director, Mira Nair gave her cast and crew the gift of both unlimited on-set chai and ample preparation time. The prep period for the film stretched for weeks. This allowed us to rehearse and really research our characters. When you’re working on a film based on a book, you have the entire expanded world at your fingertips. I took the train from New York up to New Haven, tracing Gogol’s fictional steps as laid out by Jhumpa in the novel. Which dorm room at Yale was it where I lost my virginity? Which ATM might my wife and I have entered the password LULU into? It can be rare for an actor to have this kind of time to prepare.

Once we began shooting, even more time. During a somber scene in which Gogol visits his father’s apartment shortly after he passes away, I had several beats of silence before breaking down in tears. Mira allowed only the cinematographer and sound guy on set that day, and when it was time to begin the scene, they too stepped out of the room. “When you think you’re ready,” Mira told me, “just open the door so we can switch on the camera. Give it half a beat and then you can begin.” On a film set, time is money. Mira Nair liked to spend both in ways that respected and facilitated her actors’ performances. The Namesake remains the project of which I’m most proud.1



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A few pretty exciting things happened in rapid succession over the next few years: After I wrapped The Namesake, I got a small role in Superman Returns (had an incredible time but spoiler: most of my lines ended up getting cut). We also shot a sequel to Harold & Kumar (Escape from Guantanamo Bay). I hired a speaking agent and began doing paid guest lectures on topics ranging from diversity in film to the business of acting; one such gig led to an opportunity to join the faculty at the University of Pennyslvania, where I was hired as a visiting lecturer for a semester to teach a course called Images of Asian Americans in the Media. Around the same time, my manager lined up an audition for a series-regular gig on the TV show House.

The show’s producers were adding nine new characters to play fellowship doctors in the first part of season four. Of the nine, three would stay on permanently. The makeup of the audition waiting room was like nothing I’d seen: women and men, young, old, of different backgrounds and ethnicities. Auditioning for House felt futuristic. I originally read for the part of a Mormon doctor (ultimately played by Edi Gathegi, who is Black). Curious about why the show’s creator, David Shore, would be willing to let guys who look like me or Edi audition for a part written Mormon, I would later learn that he purposely cast a wide net for actors so that he could find the best talent. It sounds simple, but almost nobody does this, especially back then. The most exciting part of the House waiting room was that it showed me that smarter people in Hollywood tended to also be the most likely to embrace artistic diversity.

After a handful of callbacks, I got an offer to play a sports medicine specialist named Dr. Lawrence Kutner. It had been eleven years since I’d moved to Los Angeles to pursue this crazy acting dream. Now I was one of nine new cast members for a few episodes of a television drama. If I was further chosen as one of the three permanent additions, it could be my first steady job in Hollywood, playing a doctor2 on a popular medical drama to boot. I was happy with the way things were taking shape. I eventually traded in my mom’s Chevy Cavalier for a black Toyota Prius.3 My new castmates and I got along really well. The start to the season featured those nine new fellowship doctors vying for a permanent job in the hospital. As actors, we were vying for a permanent spot in the cast, but rather than competing against each other, all nine actors embraced this rare opportunity and spent time getting to know one another. Olivia Wilde (Thirteen), Peter Jacobson (Dr. Taub), and I (Dr. Kutner) grew particularly close, and those friendships deepened when we three were ultimately hired on as the new series regulars. And with that, my parents finally stopped asking me to “at least” get a real estate license.4

The mood among the three of us on set was light and fun. During downtime, we would solve crossword puzzles, tell stories, and oh right… we’d also play something called Accidentally Fucked in the Ass.5

The premise of this “game” was introduced to us by screenwriter Sara Hess at two a.m. on a Saturday while shooting a scene in the Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital lobby. The rules are as follows: Each player enacts a scenario in which they’re going about an everyday task (like making coffee). At some point, the player decides to get “accidentally fucked in the ass” by their imaginary significant other—indicated by a crazy facial expression. For example, while Peter is in the middle of adding cream or sugar, his face quickly contorts—and that’s the exact moment in which he is “accidentally fucked in the ass.” It was not a very complicated “game.”