Kumail Nanjiani Is "Very Proud" of His ETERNALS Performance - "I Do Not Get to Choose What the Reviewers Are Going to Think"
Despite an Academy Award-winning director in Chloé Zhao, and a star-studded cast that included Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani, Bill Skarsgård, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harrington, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, and Ma Dong-seok, Marvel’s Eternals fell flat with audiences and critics.
Zhao recently spoke out about her hopes for the film, saying she had envisioned a sequel and more stories about these incredible characters.
Ensemble star Kumail Nanjiani, who played Kingo in the film, also had good things to say about his role and his time making the movie, telling Rachel Martin with NPR’s Wild Card that the film changed how he approached work — something he’s “very grateful for. I’m very proud of my performance in it,” he said. “And it’s rare to say, but I actually wouldn’t change anything about how I am in that movie.”
Nanjiani went on to share his biggest takeaways from the experience, including the importance of separating “my experience of something versus the result of something. Most times if I’m acting in something, I do not get to decide how good it’s gonna be.
“I do not get to choose how the audience is going to receive it. I do not get to choose how much money it’s going to make. I do not get to choose what the reviewers are going to think of it. What I do get to choose is whether or not I learned from it, you know?
“So to me, that’s been a thing that I have to remind myself over and over and over and over – is that a failure is not a failure. It truly is an opportunity to learn… What I can control is learning from every job and taking a joyful approach to every job.”
In the past, Nanjiani has been open about his feelings around the project, discussing how the negative reception of Eternals led him to therapy on fellow stand-up comedian Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast. “I signed on for six movies,” said Nanjiani. “They make you sign up for all this stuff… and then none of that happened.”
It really was too bad that Eternals didn’t get a fair shake. I really liked the movie, and what it set up in the post-credits scenes, but it just didn’t fit into the MCU.
via: Variety