Kumail Nanjiani has revealed that he expected his career in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to take off after Eternals, because he had “signed on for six movies”.
The Big Sick star was cast as the cosmic superhero Kingo in the 2021 Marvel film, which adapted the comic about ancient aliens protecting the earth from attack.
In preparation for the role, Nanjiani, 47, underwent a major physical transformation to gain a muscular, “superhero” physique.
Unfortunately, the Chloe Zhao-directed feature did not receive the rave reviews fans and film execs had hoped – compared to other Marvel properties, Eternals has one of the lowest ratings on the aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with a 47 per cent rating.
In a podcast appearance, Nanjiani revealed that how he dealt with the film’s performance and the subsequent blowback is “now the last 15 minutes of my standup set”.
“I talked about how I was in this big movie. It came out right after Covid, so I had a year and a half at home to just be like, ‘Oh, when this thing comes out!’” Nanjiani said on the Working It Out podcast. “But then it came out and it got really bad reviews and it didn’t do that well. It shattered me too much. That’s when I was like, ‘Oh I need to go to therapy to figure this out.’”
Confirming to the host Mike Birbiglia that the “big movie” was Eternals, Nanjiani said he believed he would be much more involved in the MCU considering everything he signed a contract for.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be my job for the next 10 years,’” Nanjiani said. “I signed on for six movies. I signed on for a video game. I signed on for a theme park ride. They make you sign up for all this stuff. And you’re like, ‘This is the next 10 years of my life, so I’ll be doing Marvel movies every year and, in between, I’ll do my own little things, whatever I want to do.’ And then none of that happened.”
“For me, what really hit me, was just realising too much of my self esteem was tied up in other people’s reaction to my work.”
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Also starring Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Brian Tyree Henry, and Barry Keoghan, Eternals was panned both critically and commercially. The film, made on a $236.2m budget, ended up making $402.1m worldwide at the box office.
While there were initial plans for Eternals to get a sequel, Marvel boss Kevin Feige revealed in 2024 that there were “no immediate plans for Eternals 2”.
Last year, Nanjiani opened up about the toll the negative responses to Eternals took on him.
“The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it,” the Lovebirds star said on the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum. “I was reading every review and checking too much.”
In The Independent’s three-star review of the film, critic Clarisse Loughrey praised Zhao for the emotional maturity expressed throughout.
She wrote: “Despite its characters explicitly tussling with their own lack of humanity, Zhao has delivered one of the most emotionally grounded entries in the entire franchise. She puts into full view the kind of moral quandaries that Marvel’s only ever really danced around in the past – the cost of individual life, or whether humanity is even worth saving in the first place.”
