Continuing with  Namesake week, here is  the first part of an interview done with Kal Penn last week,  just after the Academy Awards.  

Q: The name plays a lot of importance in the film, and you’ve changed your name.   In the movie’s credits, you appear twice (Kal Penn as Gogol, Kalpen Modi as Nikhil).   What was going on in your mind when you were working in this movie?

KP: It’s interesting because Gogol changes his name legally, but I just changed mine on my headshots, I didn’t change mine legally.   There are a lot of actors who come up with a stage name or a screen name, but obviously, you think about the significance of what a name means, and in Gogol’s case, it has nothing to do with ethnicity or heritage.   He’s been assigned this Russian dysfunctional author’s name and he can’t stand it.   Why is he named after this virginal, screwed-up-in-the-head guy?   Yeah fine, he was a talented author but in personal matters he was shunned pretty much.   So that’s what bothers Gogol and I thought that was interesting.  

Half of the reason that I changed it was to make it more palatable, to get more auditions and when I saw that was actually working obviously, that bothers you.   It doesn’t bother me individually, I just think it’s an unfortunate reflection on the state of affairs in the film industry that something like that would make a big difference.  

So every time I’ve done something either I’ve been really proud of, or had an amazing time working on, I’ve tried to get my real name in the credits in there somewhere.   A film I did called American Made, that was a short film, I’m credited as Kalpen Modi not Kal Penn.   In Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle I was a production assistant for a day on a day when I didn’t have any scenes so that I could get my name in the credits somewhere as my real name, and the same with The Namesake.  

I asked Mira “˜How do you feel about Gogol and Nikhil being credited separately as Kalpen Modi and Kal Penn, because there are two different age ranges and the character grows a little bit, and she said   “˜That’s a great idea!   Let’s do it!’

Q: What made you choose The Namesake as the next film you wanted to do and how did it come to you?

KP: I think the first thing to realize is there’s the assumption that actors just can choose whatever role you want and your rent’s paid and everything’s all good”¦The movies I’ve done up until a certain point, clearly you can choose to reject the movie on the artistic merit but you have to think about whether or not you can afford to pay your rent, you have to think about whether not working for a period of time will prevent you from working in the future, so even if you’re doing something that isn’t particularly artistically challenging, it’s in your best interest sometimes to do it because it will keep you working.  

Then comes along something like The Namesake which is a very low budget movie, you’re actually losing money by doing it, but artistically it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before and I had to do this film because ultimately the reason you’re an actor is to tell compelling stories.   That’s the ultimate goal, even sometimes when you do bad movies the goal is to build a resume so you have the opportunity to do a good movie.  

Nobody’s just gonna walk up – well I guess last night was a different example with Dreamgirls winning – but usually nobody’s going to hand you the opportunity if you’re an unknown.   You have to pay your dues and the example that I give is, I didn’t want to do the first Van Wilder when that project came along and I auditioned for it and fought really hard for it and decided to do it ultimately because I knew it would lead to better projects.   And had I not done Van Wilder I could never have done Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle because they wanted to hire an actor who had had experience before with another studio and had I not done Harold and Kumar, I’d never have gotten the chance to do The Namesake because Mira’s son, Zohran, and her agent’s son, Sam, are the reason I got the audition to begin with, for the most part, because they kept bugging their parents to audition Kumar “˜cause they were huge Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle fans.   So essentially had I not done Van Wilder I would not have had the chance to do The Namesake, and that’s the kind of connection that’s important to build on each other.

Q: When we spoke two weeks ago about all the debate on Sepia Mutiny about you taking the role on 24, you said you had more to say about it when we met today.   What else did you want to add?   [Editor’s note:   This refers to an interview for the next issue of Khabar magazine.]

A:   I think the clarification I wanted to make, because we were talking about it for quite a while, is the difference between individually and socially, living in society.   Individually it’s unfair to say to an actor “˜You can’t take this role on 24 because you’re not white or black’ essentially is what they’re saying.   Why shouldn’t I have the opportunity to shoot somebody with a gun, to expand my artistic abilities by taking a role that’s so challenging?   I think that’s unfair on an individual level, but on a societal level you can’t deny that we’re being fed very specific images about people of color and particularly South Asians regularly, whether it’s the news media or the entertainment media.   So it’s certainly something you have to remain conscious of, but ultimately you need to figure out why you’re an actor.   Are you an actor because you really want to be a politician, or are you an actor individually because you enjoy the artistic merit of it?   And I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle there.   It’s not an easy answer, which is why I’m glad that those discussions are taking place.  

Q. Since you’ve done that role and you’ve been traveling around the U.S. have you had people come up to you and say “˜I saw you on 24 recently”¦’, and is that the identification they make, as opposed to Harold and Kumar?  

KP:   No, no, actually I’ve never met anyone so far who hasn’t had the ability to separate fiction from fact, with regard to that role, which actually surprised me.   And I’m shooting a role in Louisiana right now, and that really shocked me because I’d never really spent time in the south and the only thing you hear about the south is sort of equally stereotypical as if you’ve never met a South Asian person and the only thing you seen on TV, the only southern characters on TV are dumb rednecks and that’s not true of the south at all and I’ve spent so much time in Louisiana.   I was at the grocery store the first week I was down there and this huge guy comes up to me, you know, if you saw him on TV, you’re used to see somebody like him kicking somebody’s butt, but he comes up to me and goes “˜Saw you on that 24‘, and I said “˜Uh huh”¦’, and the guy said “That was a really nice job, man.   I really enjoyed watching that, that was really interesting role, especially for you.   I heard you did some comedies before, I really want to check those out, “˜cause I can’t believe you can be funny if you were a terrorist.”  

So there is a separation.   But again, this is my experience as an actor, if you look at hate crimes post 9-11 clearly there is no separation across America also.   The point that I was trying to make was that I’m glad that people are discussing it, why I’m glad that people are getting pissed off about it is that I think that one of the things that’s happened since September 11 is we feel like we don’t have control over our representatives in government, especially as people of color, and I think it’s important to take that back.

It’s important to write letters to your Senator, your Congressman, to the guys who are actually voting on the issues that come up fictitiously on 24.   The things that happen on 24 are so far-fetched, but there’s an under layer of reality to them that applies to things like the Patriot Act and racial profiling.  

These are things that I hope people don’t just blog on Sepia Mutiny and whine their asses off, I hope that they take that a step further and take the passions they explain in those blogs and send a letter to Hillary Clinton, send a letter to whoever your usual rep is and it does have a remarkable effect when you do it as voting block and I hope that it motivates people to take that a step further.

End of Part 1.