and I think all of it

makes the other things better, I think.

Being a comedian makes me a better actor

which makes me a better writer

and being a better writer makes me a better comedian,

makes you a better producer.

I think everything sort of feeds into each other.

The more you see other sides of the process,

I think the better.

My name is Kumail Nanjiani

and this is the timeline of my career.

- Who can tell me what this is?

- Anybody know?

- Is it a semi-automatic assault weapon?

[audience laughs]

- No, it's not.

It's what's called a snowmobile.

- It's possible, you could be right.

[audience laughs]

- [Kumail] The first time I'd ever done anything on TV

was Saturday Night Live.

Which feels like something people do many, many years in.

Basically I just moved to New York, I was doing open mics

and I met this guy who was a writer for SNL,

and they needed a brown guy for a sketch

and he just contacted me and he said,

"Hey, do you wanna be on Saturday Night Live?"

And I was like, "What do you mean?"

And he said, "We have a sketch and you'd have some lines."

And I said, "Okay!"

I was very, very scared.

The cast was in the scene and they had little lines,

I was the only one who was not part of the cast

who had lines.

But I remember Will Forte was right behind me

and he was very, very nice,

he said you know, "Just don't be nervous,

just read the cards, it'll be fine."

He saw that I was nervous.

Darrell Hammond was very nice, Kristen Wiig was very nice.

I did the dress rehearsal, I had three lines

and one of them didn't go great, and so they cut that line.

So when we actually did it, I had two lines.

I was extremely nervous, but it went well!

That was my first credit.

And then I wasn't on Saturday Night Live for 11, 12 years?

It took 11, 12 years to come back there.

I hadn't really considered

being on camera or being an actor at that point.

I was just sort of writing standup comedy,

I'd never even written for a TV show.

So it really felt like I jumped up a few steps

and I was like, "All right, Hollywood here I come!"

That did not happen.

- This is Sophie and her nanny Walter.

- Did you get him through a service?

- Uh, yep.

- Yeah?

- Yep.

- He's your cab driver, isn't he?

- Yep.

- Yeah.

So this guy Greg Berlanti who's

since created The Flash

and all the DC shows on, you know on TV.

A true genius.

He was directing a movie

called Life as We Know It with Katherine Heigl

and I just went in an audition for it and I improvised

and Greg liked me and he put me in the movie,

and I remember just sort of

improvising during all the scenes

and I was like, "All right, here we go,

my life's gonna be completely different

once this movie comes out."

Did not happen.

But it was very fun, I had a great time.

Life as We Know It was one of the first auditions I did

and I got the part, and I was like,

"Oh, this stuff is really, really easy!

Here we go!

Let's buy a boat."

None of that happened.

But I will say that was the biggest part I'd had in a movie

for many, many, many years.

After that I would get little parts and stuff,

but Life as We Know It,

I believe I had three scenes in that.

For about seven or eight years

that was the biggest part I'd had in a movie.

- Hey, welcome to Disaster Hut.

So I'm just gonna ask you some basic questions,

earthquakes, typhoons, tornados, super virus,

big landslides, you name it, we handle it.

Let's talk beans.

- Beans.

- I met Fred Armisen at Bumbershoot

which is a music festival in Seattle

that also does some comedy shows

and I had just had a profile in The New York Times,

like a sort of new up-and-coming guy.

And I was a huge fan of Fred's, you know.

And I have this thing when

I meet someone who I'm a big fan of,

I don't wanna fan out and so,

so sometimes I'll go the other way

and end up actually being rude

because I don't want them to know I'm a fan of them.

Fred was like,

"Hey really great profile in The New York Times!"

And I think I was like, "Yeah, I know."

And I just walked away, and then I was like,

"That was a huge mistake!"

And then a couple months later, oh my god,

all these things are connected.

I had done a reoccurring bit

on Colbert Report right after SNL,

and the director of that, her name's Al

then went on to do Portlandia

and I ran into her in New York on a subway.

So much luck, so much luck.

She just was like, "Hey, I have something for you

that I think you might be good in!"

And I said, "Okay sure,

whatever you want, you know, I'll take."

And then I got an email that said that

Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney and Fred Armisen

who I had been rude to very recently

were gonna do a new sketch show on IFC

which hadn't really done

a lot of original programming at the time,

and I talk to the director of that show Jon Krisel

and he was like, "I'm gonna send you a script,

I'm gonna send you a script, this is what it's about

and it's basically about a guy

who is trying to upsell them on a cellphone plan."

And I kept waiting for the script

and the script just never came, it just never came

so I went in without a script, there was no script.

Turns out most of that show is improvised,

they have a very loose idea of where they're going.

My call time was 6-6, we started shooting at 7 AM

and by 8:30 I was done.

And I remember we laughed so much during it,

it was so much fun and Fred and Carrie were so funny.

And I'd never seen a sketch show like that.

And I was like, "That was weird,

that was the easiest shoot I'd ever had

but I think that was really fun,

I think it went really, really good."

And it led to every job I've had since then.

Most birthdays in Pakistan a monkey shows up?

[audience laughs]

All right.

The fact that you just accepted that is racist.

[audience laughs]

But it also does happen?

[audience laughs]

So having like an hour-long comedy special to me

was sort of, that's how you know

you've arrived as a comedian.

Before that it was, have to be on Letterman.

I got to do Letterman, and then it was like,

all right I need an album and I need an hour special.

And I've been doing standup for a long time

but my standup voice had kind of changed

so even though I'd been doing standup for about,

wow, 10 years at that point,

a lot of those jokes weren't usable anymore,

they just weren't funny coming out of my mouth anymore.

So basically those were all jokes

that I'd written in the last two or three years,

I did an hour, I recorded it in Austin.

I had a great time.

Very proud of that special.

I would change the wardrobe.

I didn't realize that that's like, around forever

and I remember being like,

"Wow, I really crushed that outfit."

And it's just like, a very loose flannel,

the very loose hoodie.

No haircut.

What a disaster.

My parents saw the special, they really liked it

but you know, I think for them

it was a little bit of an adjustment.

I was such a shy kid, they had not anticipated

their son becoming like, a comedian or an actor.

Initially, they weren't very vocal with their support

but whenever I'd go to their house

there would be reviews and newspaper articles

and pictures of me up everywhere,

so I knew they were proud of me

and now they talk about it a lot more.

- Pindar Singh?

- Yes?

- I'm JD Adhira with CIB.

- Good god, we're both brown, brother.

I expect to be harassed by the FBI, the CIA, the NSA,

the TSA but not one of our own.

So Franklin and Bash happened

because right before that I'd written on a show

called Michael and Michael Have Issues

and they wanted the writers,

which is just me and Jessi Klein

who later went on to be like

the head writer of Inside Amy Schumer, amazing writer.

They wanted us to be in the show.

So we wrote the first season, I was in that show,

I had a great time acting

and we started writing the second season

and we got canceled as we were writing the second season

and that was really heartbreaking,

I was like, "Oh, I don't wanna be that involved with

the show anymore."

That it's like super heartbreaking when it goes away,

so as soon as it went away I was like,

"All right, I like acting, I just wanna like see if

I can get an acting job,

I'll be a little bit more chill about it!

Let's just see if that happens."

So I flew out to LA and I stayed at my friend's house

and there's a thing called pilot season,

or it used to be a thing, it's not so much a thing anymore

where two or three months they're just sorta

casting all the new shows that are gonna get shot

and new pilots that are gonna get shot.

So I ended up auditioning for so many pilots,

I didn't get any of them and then I flew back to New York

and I was like, oh that's too bad.

That didn't work out.

And then I put myself on tape for one more show,

it was a show called Franklin and Bash on TNT

starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer

and they flew me out, I remember I tested for it

which is sort of the last round of auditioning

and then I got the part!

And I was very excited, 'cause I was like,

"Okay, I get to now act

and I don't have to like, write anything

for a little while."

That moved us out to LA and yeah,

started shooting that show, I had no idea what I was doing

but everyone was very supportive.

That's sort of unfortunately the show where

I kinda figured out how to act, how to be on set,

all that kind of stuff,

ended up doing that show for three seasons.

It was just great for the first time in my life

having a paycheck that was consistent from comedy,

you know, I hadn't had that.

I had an office job when I was doing standup in Chicago

but suddenly I was making regular money from acting