Kumail Nanjiani's Feelings

The actor always wanted his own superhero transformation. Now he’s buff, a Marvel star, and struggling with how much of his new body is his own.

- By E. Alex Jung. Photographs by David Alekhuogie

KUMAIL NANJIANI would like to remind everyone about his brain, but I’ve brought him to the gym to talk about his muscles. He gets that this is all people—especially men—have wanted to talk about since the photos. You’ve seen them. He strikes a superhero pose, his shirtless torso slicked with baby oil, displaying branching veins that crisscross his arms like a complex irrigation system. Brows arched, he gazes at something in the middle distance— more muscles? He posted them from the set of Eternals in December 2019, the culmination of a 14-month process that began almost immediately after the director Chloé Zhao cast him in the movie as a (roughly) 7,000-year-old Earth defender named Kingo. There was no mandate from Zhao or the studio to remake his body in the mold of the Hollywood Chrises. This was all him. If he was going to be the first South Asian superhero in a Marvel production, then he wanted to look like a guy who could stand in a lineup alongside Captain America and Thor and the rest of them. Plus Kingo lives in the modern-day world as a Bollywood superstar. I mean, have you seen Hrithik Roshan? Have you seen those melons?

These were the rationalizations he gave to Zhao and the studio as he embarked on a serious quest filled with trainers and nutritionists and a cardiologist. Really, he just wanted it in a primal, adolescent way and has wanted it since he was a kid so painfully shy he worried shopkeepers thought he was ugly. This was his chance, and if he didn’t take it at the age of 40, he never would. He would enter the Marvel laboratory as a fan and emerge as a superhero. A comic-book dream.