Kal Penn

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Hollywood has had many ugly elements from its past that it's slowly tried to overcome, but none has proven to be more damaging and egregious than its treatment of minorities. No American actor has seemingly had more stacked against him and more to prove than Kal Penn.

Penn is one of the few successful American actors of Indian ethnicity. Born Kalpen Modi, he has risen to stardom initially for roles in raunchy comedies like National Lampoon's Van Wilder, Malibu's Most Wanted, and Epic Movie.

However, he has managed to branch out with roles in hit series 24, Superman Returns, and a role as Dr. Lawrence Kuntner on the popular Fox medical drama House. However, Kal's career really started beginning to skyrocket with his role as pothead Kumar Patel in the stoner comedy Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle.

The film received critical acclaim for infusing the traditionally lazy and exploitative elements of the subgenre with racial and politically-charged subtext and grew to be an enormous cult favorite. Now, Penn has returned to the role with co-star John Cho in the new sequel Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

Speaking with the now 31-year old actor, we first asked Kal how he first felt about doing a second Harold and Kumar.

'It was a weird challenge, because the first movie was four years earlier,' Penn recalls, 'And so, here we are, four years later, and John Cho and I are close friends now. [Director/producer/writers] Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossburg and I are close, we're all close. And we've all been in touch with Neil [Patrick Harris] the last for years. We shot the movie in Louisiana and just basically moved to the state and shot the movie and it was a lot of fun.'

Usually, most actors are reluctant to do sequels because of the common concern that the character they play gets repetitious. We asked Penn if viewers will get to see more development with Harold and Kumar in Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

'Yeah, you do.,' Kal replies, 'Because in the first movie, really, you only get to spend 12 to 13 hours with them, but it's over the course of a night, so you don't really get to know about who Harold and Kumar are. And in this movie, you see Harold in college, you see Kumar still in love with his ex-girlfriend. You see all those things play out in a way that you didn't for. It was very exciting for us as actors to know there was more of a dynamic to these guys.'

We also asked if he ever gets regularly asked by potheads who are fans of the film whether he actually smokes weed himself.

'Quite a few and it's sad for the people that ask, because I don't smoke weed in real life. I was a vegetarian throughout the first movie and it was about burgers,' he replies, ' It's one of those things where I don't go out of my way to tell people I was a vegetarian or that I don't smoke weed, because I don't want them to be disappointed (laughing). If you want to keep the suspension of disbelief, that's OK, but sometimes it's weird. Somebody will come up to you on the street and it's odd because I'm flattered that you saw the movie ten times, but I have not met you yet.'

Much of what makes Harold and Kumar seemingly so unique is that it reflects around cultural identity and the feeling of having to adhering to both American and their ancestral cultures. We wondered whether Penn saw Kumar as a reflection of that.

'With Kumar, I think he sees himself as an American, which he is, and I don't think he has any identity struggle,' Kal believes, 'The only time ethnicity is brought up is when people confront him with it. Otherwise, he just thinks he's like everybody else, which he is, in behavior, stature, and all of that.'

'Growing up in New Jersey, I saw myself as an American and that's not mutually exclusive to have Indian and South Asian heritage,' he continues, 'I'm bilingual, so I just saw that as part of being American. I don't really put people into categories and I think a lot of people don't put others into categories unless you're questioned about it. Then, you're like, 'I have to put this into a category for you. That's kind of strange to think of yourself that way.''

As much as it has traditionally been laid on an industry that adheres mostly to an traditionally American commercial culture, Penn believes that the blame for the lack of cultural diversity in Hollywood lays equally at the foot of minority families who are adverse to having their children pursue careers in arts and entertainment.

'It's interesting, specifically with the South Asian American community, a lot of folks don't like the way we're depicted in the media or don't like the fact that we're absent from a lot of media depiction,' Kal notes, 'And yet, we don't really encourage our own kids to go into these fields. And that's not really going to change unless we encourage the community to become writers and producers and I hope they become all those things if they want to.'

However, as the entertainment industry has taken a more politically correct bottom line in the past decade, Kal claims that minority actors benefit now more than ever in Hollywood today as a result of a more equal-level playing field that allows actors of all walks of life to be cast based on their talent rather than their ethnicity.

'That's definitely one of the treats of having worked on a couple of films is that you're meeting people who are really talented from all walks of life, musicians, writers, and actors,' he believes, 'It's very inspiring to see and I think it's evidenced now in the last five years, you've seen TV shows like Lost and Grey's Anatomy and House, where they do what would be considered 'colorblind casting'. The characters are interesting because of the content of who they are and not what they look like, I hope that's a trend that continues.'

With the emergence of the sequel, we wondered whether or not Kal would be interested in partaking of another Harold and Kumar pot adventure if Escape From Guantanamo Bay was successful enough.

'I don't want to be 45 years old doing Harold & Kumar 15, but I wouldn't be opposed to doing another one, I don't think,' he says, 'I like this character because he's so different from me and that's one of the joys of being an actor is to play parts that are different from you. I don't know if we had a third one, it would depend on whether or not people go out and support the sequel. If you do, you may see a third one.'

The Namesake, an earlier film, is an adaptation of the Jhumpa Lahiri novel. He plays the role of Gogol, the son of an Indian immigrant family who is torn between his family's cultural traditions and the American culture that surrounds him.

All in all, Penn feels that his opportunities to play such diverse roles have allowed him with little to regret. The thing he is most proud of is his ability to show his audience that time and time again that he's more than merely Kal Penn, the Indian American or Kal Penn, the funny pothead character guy, but simply Kal Penn, the actor.

'One of the fortunate things about being an actor is that I've gone from drama to comedy and I've been very fortunate to do both,' he believes, 'So Harold and Kumar opened the door to something like The Namesake and 24, which are certainly dramas, and House. So, it was fun to play such a broad character, then go back on something like House and flip it again. I enjoy it.'