In his stand-up special Night Thoughts, Kumail Nanjiani looks inward to what keeps him up at night and covers subjects ranging from his cat to therapy to the weird public obsession with him having gotten buff, all with the comfort of a Chicago audience, returning him to his roots in this business.
Awards Buzz spoke with Nanjiani about the relatability of the topic that serves as his special’s title:
“It’s really true that I didn’t realize when I first started talking about it, I think I was at Largo, as soon as I said it, I heard this gasp in the audience and I was like, oh, other people have this. And that’s when I was like, okay, I feel like I’ve really hit on something here. It’s all very similar. A lot of it is imposter syndrome, people thinking that people are going to find out that their jobs are not good or things like that, so I think what’s interesting about it is how consistent and boring everyone’s night thoughts are, just as boring as mine. I’ve been traveling a lot recently and so I’ve been in various states of jet lag, and I’ll tell you, jet lag night thoughts are super-powered.”
On whether he has a red line on what might be too personal to share, he expressed:
“Well, it depends on what the scope of the thing is. I don’t think of it as, these are the things I’ll never talk about, but there are certain things that fit what I’m talking about, what I want to say in that moment, and certain things that don’t. So, for this one, for Night Thoughts specifically, my goal was to be as vulnerable as I could possibly be and really think about, or really articulate, what are the things in the last few years that have really been, literally since COVID, what are the things that I think about all the time? I think there are probably some personal things that I would never want to approach, maybe something that reflects poorly on me or people around me. But, for me, it’s always, what is the scope of the piece I’m doing, and then, within that, I think I’m fairly open about everything.”
Watch the video above to hear about his guest spots this season on Fallout and The Boys, plus his Emmy-nominated dramatic turns in Welcome to Chippendales and The Twilight Zone and how the world of standup comedy has changed since he first entered it.
Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts is streaming on Hulu.
