Kumail Nanjiani opens up about his body transformation in 2019 – and the effects that are so widespread. (Photo: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
Kumail Nanjiani talks about how he’s dealt with the public reaction to his widely reported body transformation in 2019.
It’s been almost three years since the Eternals star, 44, posted a shirtless photo of himself to Instagram, showing off his abs and muscular arms. Now, in a new interview with GQ Hype, the actor opens up about the pressure he faced when the media turned his body into clickbait.
“It’s weird that my body plays such a role in public conversations,” he explained at the time. “For me personally, this is not a good result, but I also understand that as a public figure I can talk about everything.”
“I’m the one who uploaded those Instagram pics, so that’s how I started it. I have no regrets,” Nanjiani clarified. “But it turned out to be something I didn’t expect. For my body to be criticized like that… I think I now understand 0.0001% of what it could be like to be an actress in Hollywood.”
While Nanjiani admits he doesn’t have to deal with the pressures Hollywood actresses face when it comes to their bodies, at the time he was routinely asked about his body in interviews, which took some getting used to.
“It’s such a small part of my life,” he says today. “There’s always a risk in publicly anticipating something you’re going through personally. And that’s exactly what happened in these interviews. I have grappled with the fallout from these images and the waves of response to them and my own part in causing them and my own part in promoting a male body standard that is ultimately unhealthy, unattainable and unrealistic.
“Some people reacted to me expecting it and thinking that was part of a performance too,” he noted of how he handled the reaction. “And now I’m saying it, and maybe that’ll be construed as part of the performance … I did these interviews because there was so much on my mind.”
The story goes on
“I really have no more words to say about it,” he said.
Nanjiani has been open in the past about how talking about his body eventually led him into an unhealthy cycle. In an interview with GQ last year, he admitted he was fixated on his looks and stats.
“I’ve found in the last year and a half since taking this picture that I’m very uncomfortable talking about my body,” he said at the time, “and it’s gotten less and less comfortable.”
Additionally, Nanjiani explained, the experience made him realize how damaging maintaining toxic masculinity on social media had become for men.
“It’s aggression,” he said of the idealized male body. “It’s anger. We are often taught to be useful, using physical strength or our brains in aggressive, competitive ways. Not in an empathetic way. Not in an open, collaborative way. It’s the same when you have all these guys asking people to discuss them on Twitter. This is the same as arm wrestling. It’s about defeating. And that was the male ideal. Dominate. Defeat. Crush. Kill. To destroy. That’s what gets jacked. “
In a separate interview with 2021 Vulture, he admitted he’s “obsessed with that number on the scale.”
“It’s a difficult thing,” shared the Welcome to Chippendales actor. “It’s deceptive. You become obsessed with it. I definitely have it, and I don’t feel like weighing myself every day. I could tell you what I weigh today. If I could change anything, I wouldn’t mind have to think about that.”
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