‘The Big Sick’ Star Kumail Nanjiani’s New Reason to See ‘Last Jedi’ is a Sweet Story About Director Rian Johnson
The star and writer of “The Big Sick” Kumail Nanjiani took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to share a humble and unforgettable encounter he had with director Rian Johnson, whose film “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” will rule the box office this coming weekend. This encounter happened in 2012, before Nanjiani starred in HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” when he was doing interviews on a San Diego Comic-Con red carpet.
Nanjiani details in his 12-tweet thread how stressful the job was for him to do interviews on a red carpet, a situation only made worse by an interviewee who was extremely rude to him and made a mockery of him.
After that unfortunate encounter, Nanjiani went to the “Total Recall” and “Looper” red carpet and saw that Johnson was one of the people he was interviewing. Never leaving his comedic charm aside, Nanjiani recounts how the situation could have gone so much worse when he told Johnson (who was there for “Looper”) that he “can’t wait to see the remake of ‘Total Recall’” he was directing. “It was one of those stupid brain things,” Nanjiani said.
Instead of dismissing him on that red carpet, Johnson responded, “I wish! I did ‘Looper.’” After seeing how Nanjiani was upset by the mix-up, Johnson laughed at the situation without mocking him for his mistake, and he put his hand on Najiani’s shoulder. “He truly went out of his way to make me feel ok, to make me not feel like a loser,” Nanjiani said.
Read the entire Twitter thread below:
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940638430157000707
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940639525042352130
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940641019103674368
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940642437302833152
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940643988847169537
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940645045404872704
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940647314401701888
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940647487328710657
Also, Nanjiani and Johnson had a quite funny tweet exchange Monday in which “The Last Jedi” was brought up, but also a subtle acknowledgment that the Golden Globes snubbed “The Big Sick”:
https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/940268014334889984
https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/940337206866186240
https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/940342903074885632
“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” opens in theaters this Thursday, Dec. 15.
