Kumail Nanjiani revealed in a new interview that he has managed to deal with the after-effects of the negative reactions that Eternals got. The actor-comedian, who played the superhero Kingdo, said in an episode of NPR's Wild Card that he wouldn't change anything about his performance regardless of how the overall reception was.
“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.”
He added that he has found a way to separate his "experience of something versus the result of something” and that he doesn't get to choose and not be responsible for how people respond to the things that are beyond his control.
“Most times if I’m acting in something, I do not get to decide how good it’s gonna be,” shared the star of The Big Sick. “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.”
This is not the first time that Nanjiani addressed the Eternals' reaction and its impact on his mental state, admitting that he even sought therapy for the same, in Nanjiani Birbiglia’s “Working It Out” podcast.
“I signed on for six movies,” said Nanjiani then. “They make you sign up for all this stuff… and then none of that happened.”
“I talked about how I was in this big movie. It came out right after COVID, so I had a year and a half at home to just be like, ‘Oh, when this thing comes out!'” Nanjiani shared. “But then it came out, and it got really bad reviews, and it didn’t do that well. It shattered me too much. That’s when I was like, ‘Oh, I need to go to therapy to figure this out.'”
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be my job for the next 10 years,'” Nanjiani continued. “I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. They make you sign up for all this stuff. And you’re like, ‘This is the next 10 years of my life, so I’ll be doing Marvel movies every year and, in between, I’ll do my own little things, whatever I want to do.’ And then none of that happened.”