Kal Penn's best known for roles in comedy films such as Van Wilder, Malibu's Most Wanted, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, however the New Jersey native and UCLA graduate trained in the theater and enjoys dramatic roles as much as he does lighter fare. In The Namesake, based on Jhumpa Lahiri's novel and directed by Mira Nair, Penn gets to stretch his dramatic muscles by tackling the lead role of Gogol. The family drama follows Gogol's struggle to establish his identity and balance his family's Indian heritage with his American upbringing.
Understanding His Character’s Environment and Culture: “I think there are similarities and there are a lot of differences. The biggest assumption that people seem to come up with is that I enjoyed playing the role because we're both Indian Americans, which could not be farther from the truth. I think that's actually the most boring reason to be attracted to a role, is because of ethnicity. On the contrary, when I read the book, it reminded me of Catcher in the Rye, which is weird because the two stories are completely different.
I loved Holden Caulfield. I'm not a rich kid from New England who went to boarding school, and yet for some reason I was drawn to that character when I was 14 and read the book. And it was a similar experience. You know, we both, in this case, do have a similar background in terms of being first generation Americans of Indian descent, whatever. But there was something intangible about the character that attracted me to the story. And we're totally different. He's an architect, I'm an actor. He's kind of self-absorbed, especially after his college years. He goes from being a little bit cynical to being a little bit self-absorbed. So those are sort of the differences that I found interesting to play with.”
The role also offered Penn the chance to play an entire life. “That was incredible. And not just an entire life, but a life based on a book that you could refer to. I mean, if you look at my copy of The Namesake, it's all beaten up and highlighted. Stuff is falling out of it. You really can refer to everything in the book from where Gogol loses his virginity, what his ATM password is. All that stuff is in the book, so you refer to it constantly.”
Analyzing the Story and His Character: “The way that I read the story was that Gogol's the one character in that whole thing who is totally comfortable with his identity in that whole film, perhaps with the exception of Ashoke [played by Irrfan Khan]. Ashima's the one who goes through the biggest transformation in terms of identity. Who is she? She's moved to America, she's trying to fit in.
Certainly Jacinda [Barrett’s] character, you know in the middle of an intimate moment, she says, ‘Don't your parents want you to marry a nice Indian girl?’ And he totally dismisses it, because he's never thought twice about it. He's like, ‘Well, I don't care what they want. This is what I want.’ He doesn't acknowledge it, he just says whether they want it or not. Even the woman that he marries, when we find out that she's been cheating on him, she says, ‘Maybe it's not enough that we're both Bengali,’ and that's never once entered his mind. He's in love with her because he's in love with who she is, not her background.”
Shooting in the Taj Mahal: “That was cool. I had never been to the Taj Mahal before, and I had never been to Calcutta before, so it was a very, very intense experience. And the Taj Mahal is this beautiful building that is... It's not because of the size of it, but it's the scope of the history of that building and where it is and why it's so amazingly beautiful that really fed the scene. That was a very easy scene to do because I was as amazed as Gogol was with this building.”
Unfortunately, Penn didn’t have much free time to explore India or absorb the local culture. “It was mostly work. We were there for about three weeks. I ended up befriending a couple guys on the crew who took me to their village for lunch one day, which was awesome. I wanted to stick around and explore a little more, but I had to go straight from there to Australia for the Superman shoot. I didn't get to hang out and check out as much stuff as I would have liked.”
The Wedding Night Dance: The bit of dancing in the film seemed a little out of character for Gogol, and Penn said it was Mira Nair’s idea. Asked how it was choreographed, Penn replied, “That was Mira's idea and it was choreographed in New York before we left for India. Or actually, that scene takes place in the US, we shot it in India. But yeah, that was Mira's idea. I think it was uncharacteristic compared to the rest of the film, but I think it indicates something that I always found interesting about Gogol, which is when he's in any public sphere, any public space, you can't tell what's going on in his head a lot. He's got a very different public persona than private persona. Much like all of us, his relationship with his parents, the way he speaks to his parents, is clearly different than the way he's going to speak to his girlfriend.
But that scene, because it's that dance, it's got this particular intimacy that I think you don't see in other aspects of Gogol's life. So when he's doing this dance with the woman that he loves, he can look as foolish as he's looking, but it's not going to feel foolish because he's married her. They're going to experience everything with each other for the rest of their lives until [spoiler deleted].”
Page 2: Kal Penn on the Next Harold and Kumar Movie and 24
