It has been two years since his breakout role in the indie fi lm Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, yet Kal Penn still inspires cult-like fervor in the most unusual of circumstances. Posing for a portrait on an anonymous New York stoop, the actor is approached by a construction worker from down the block, wondering if Penn is Kumar because he has bet his fellow workers he isn’t. “Damn, I’m out 50 bucks,” he moans.
But over the next few months, Penn is likely to become known for more than just a burger comedy; he has upcoming roles in the new season of 24 and as the lead in Mira Nair’s fi lm The Namesake, both of which mark a dramatic debut in his comedy-heavy résumé. In the latter, an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name, Penn plays Gogol, the son of two Bengali immigrants, growing up in New England and caught between two cultural poles. It is a part that required the actor to evolve convincingly from a shaggy-haired 16-year-old into a 28-year-old architect.
“Everybody assumes that I identifi ed with Gogol because of the ethnicity of the character. That’s not the case,” says Penn, who grew up in New Jersey. “I identifi ed with Gogol more in the way I identifi ed with The Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school, which is just something that can’t really be qualifi ed in a little quadrant or a box.”
Aside from their ethnicity and the fact that both Gogol and Penn changed their names (originally, Penn was Kalpen Modi; his new moniker made a difference on his head shots), the two share few other details. Unlike his character, who heads to Yale and then New York, Penn attended a performing arts high school in New Jersey, then decided to pursue acting, studying theater at UCLA and settling down in Los Angeles. But The Namesake has been one of his favorite books ever since his Harold & Kumar co-star John Cho recommended it to him. The two had hoped to get the rights to the movie. No matter, since Penn is a huge fan of director Nair.
“I saw one of her films, Mississippi Masala, when I was in eighth or ninth grade, and that was one of the first times I’d seen a diverse cast that also had a legitimate story,” explains Penn. “It wasn’t like Apu from The Simpsons, where it’s some white dude doing a really bad Indian accent or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where, like, arbitrarily for some reason Spielberg decided to choose Indian people to eat monkey brains. It’s like, ‘Come on, you couldn’t come up with something more creative than that?'”
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Fortunately for Penn, it seems there are other directors and writers who can. On 24, which begins its sixth season in January, he plays “a secret U.S. government operative who is launched into outer space as part of an experimental program to help install an antiterror protective shield that is capable of deflecting enemy missiles and attacks against America.” Phew. The role required some physical training to simulate the feeling of being an astronaut. And it has gone a long way toward changing Penn’s views on television, a medium he doesn’t really watch.
It may help convert some of his Kumar fans, too, who range from college kids to senior citizens and cops. Until then, Penn will continue to be amused by their antics.
“John Cho and I were eating lunch in the West Village, and this guy is like, ‘Hey man, where’s the White Castle at?'” recalls the actor, shaking his head. “We were in a rush, so I didn’t say anything, but usually in that kind of situation I would be like, ‘I will never see you again in your entire life and that’s all you could come up with? Remember that when you go home tonight and tell all of your friends that that’s what you came up with … and by the way, it’s on Eighth Avenue by Penn Station.'”
This article appeared in WWD Scoop, a special publication to WWD available to subscribers.