Yes, My Accent Is Real (21 page)

“Wait, I can't see you—”

“Is that your connection or mine?”

“HELLO?”

“KUNAL, ARE YOU THERE?”

“CLAUDIA?”

“KUNAL?”

Finally, after ten awkward minutes of scrambled connections, she could hear me and I could hear her. The store was loud and I didn't have any headphones, but what other choice did I have?

I stared at her on the screen's tiny window.

“Okay,” she said, “let's see what you got.”

I
probably should have been nervous about the crowd of people behind me, a throng of international students who were watching me perform. But then I figured they probably didn't even speak English. Suddenly there were no tourists, no Genius Bar employees, no kids on Facebook—just me and her. I must have learned something in grad school. I delivered this emotional monologue (the climax of the play) in the middle of the store with so much passion that I began to cry. I finished the monologue and wiped my tears.

Another pause.

“I want you to come to Los Angeles and play this character for me.” Before I could respond she continued, “I can only pay you seven dollars per show, and there will only be thirty people in the audience at every performance. But I can tell you that a lot of people in the industry will be watching.”

Hmmmm. I mean, I did like the play. A lot. But this would require moving across the country for . . . seven dollars per show? You make more than that at Taco Bell, and there at least you get free chalupas.

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure. Let me know first thing tomorrow morning.”

Dazed, I pushed through the ocean of people and I left the Apple Store. There was only one person who I needed to speak to right now. It was 2 a.m. in New Delhi but I called him immediately.
C'mon, pick up, pick up, pick up . . .

“Are you okay?” my father asked.

It was a reasonable question, as you normally never call someone at 2 a.m. unless you're 1) not okay or 2) drunk and you want to sleep with them. Neither was the case right then.

“I'm
fine, Dad. I was just offered this chance to be in a play in Los Angeles.”

I told him all the details, especially the part about how it paid only seven dollars, would only have an audience of thirty people per show, and how it clearly wasn't an important enough performance to impress the Gods of the Visa Office.

Without hesitating my father asked, “Do you have any other offers?”

“Huh?”

“Is anyone else offering you a chance to work?”

“No.”

“Then go.”

“It's that simple?” I asked.

“Kunal, what's the point of weighing the pros and cons if you only have one option? There's nothing to think about. Move to Los Angeles.”

Classic Dad. He always had—and continues to have—the best perspective. So often in life we agonize, we deliberate, and we beat ourselves up to carefully evaluate the reasons we should or should not do something. But usually it's so much simpler.
If you have no other offers, take the one offer you have.
He wasn't concerned about the money. I had been living off my earnings from working in Washington, D.C., and Stratford, but they were wearing thin. He told me that if I needed money in LA, I could just get a job there. That's what people do. They pick up the pieces of what they have and move on. Civilizations were built on this very principle.

My parents had set up a support system for me where I couldn't fail. Success wasn't defined by income or status or becoming famous. That wasn't important to them. What was important to them was my happiness. They've always told me that if things don't work
out for me in America, I will always have a home to come back to. What was important to them was me not turning into an asshole. Sometimes people say, “Wow,
Big Bang Theory
—your parents must be proud of you.” I like to think that they were proud of me before
Big Bang
. They don't care that I'm an actor. They just care that I'm their kid. And a happy one at that.

The next morning I accepted the job.

I was on my way to LA.

I
. Which is also famous as the birthplace of Kunal.

HUCK AND HOLDEN
WAS BEING
staged in a theater in east LA. If you
know anything about LA geography, you will laugh at my decision to stay at an apartment in Santa Monica. Even though it is only twenty miles away, at seven dollars a show, my broke ass couldn't afford a car, so every day I spent four hours on the public bus system. I shared a one-bedroom apartment with this very sweet albeit manic-depressive girl. I was sleeping on the couch but paying half the rent, which in hindsight may not have been fair.

During one scene in
Huck and Holden
, a library of about five hundred books crashes to the ground, which meant that every night after the play, an intern at the theater would spend two hours cleaning up the books and arranging them in neat little stacks. I didn't have any friends yet and I was desperate for company, so, after each performance, instead of going home to my lonely couch, I stayed at the theater and helped stack the books.

“Kunal, you don't have to do that,” said Claudia, the director.

“Oh, I'm happy to help,” I told her, not admitting that I simply had nowhere else to go.

Claudia was a lady of her word: It was true that the production only had thirty audience members each night. But it was also true,
as she had promised, that the crowd was full of industry nabobs. On opening night, the curtain went up and I could see Michael Lynton, the president of Sony Pictures, in the audience. (I had heard he was coming and googled his picture.) He was sitting next to John Lithgow. And there was Tony Shalhoub. And Denzel Washington.
Holy shit, she's the real deal.

The play was a success. But I needed to make some real money to survive in LA. I combed Craigslist for jobs and I came across a listing for Gerardo's Raw, a raw food restaurant. They were looking for waiters. Most actors in LA wait tables, because it allows them to make cash at night while leaving their days open for auditions. Since I'd never really had experience waiting tables, I was surprised when I got a call to interview for the open position. I had no clue what raw food was, but I showed up for the interview with a big smile on my face nevertheless.

“Do you like raw food?” the owner asked.

“I love it,” I said. “Raw means you cook it without oil?”

“No. It means there's no cooking. At all.”

“Um. Yeah. That's what I meant. No oil. No nothing . . .”

For reasons known only to them, they hired me to wait tables on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. (I couldn't work the rest of the nights because of the play.) Suddenly I was around people again and soon I felt right at home. I befriended the owner, Gerardo, who hung around all day wearing tiny shorts and no shirt.
^I
I became particularly close to Diego, an energetic guy who had the whitest teeth of any man I had ever seen. I marveled at his zest for life. He had two jobs: he woke up at five in the morning to cook breakfast burritos for a beachside shack, then he cooked fish
tacos there for lunch, and then, at 4 p.m., he came to Gerardo's for the dinner shift, where he made raw cacao milk shakes and chopped all the vegetables for the salads. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, two jobs, four shifts, not one complaint.

Diego took a lot of pride in his work. “Come eat my fish tacos,” he told me one day. I could tell it meant a lot to him, so I decided to join him on the pier at his little beach shack. It overlooked the ocean, and we each sat with a fish taco in our hand wrapped in tinfoil. We cracked open a couple of Coronas.

“Eat,” he said, eagerly awaiting my approval.

I took a bite. I closed my eyes. I felt the crunch of the breaded fish, the spice of the salsa, lime, cilantro, sour cream, a hint of jalapeño. “Diego, best fish taco ever.”

That was music to his ears. He released a loud laugh, his head tilting to the sky. “I toldju, mang!” And he began to devour his own fish taco, shredding it, making these loud lip-smacking noises. I had the impression he was enjoying his taco much more today because he got to share it with someone.

I reached for my Corona as the sun was just getting ready to go to sleep.

I washed down my taco and looked over at Diego. He was quiet. Enjoying the sunset.

“I have to go to work,” he said as he got up to go.

That was it. That was his moment of elation. A fish taco, a friend, a beer, and a sunset.

Every night a guy came in who looked like he had just walked out of a WWF ring. He always wore a suit with a turtleneck instead of a shirt, rocked sunglasses indoors, and had long blond hair that
someone later told me was a wig. Zane. What a guy. He always came in alone and sat at a corner table, scribbling in his notebook. “Is Diego here?” he'd ask every night. “Can you ask him to make my milk shake Diego-thick?” (Diego made the thickest chocolate milk shakes. This became a running joke between us: “His milk shakes bring all the boys to the yard.”)

Zane drove to the restaurant in the most insanely beautiful cars; it seemed like a different one each time: Ferrari, Jaguar, Porsche, you name it. But my personal favorite was a yellow Lamborghini. Ever since I was a kid in New Delhi, I've associated real success with driving a yellow Lamborghini. When you're a little kid you measure success by the accumulation of big, shiny toys, whereas when you're an adult, you learn the real measure of success: the accumulation of big, shiny toys.

The buzz from
Huck and Holden
had begun to spread. It helped open doors for me. I only had nine months left on my student visa and I knew it was imperative that I get an agent. Claudia had helped me get a few meetings with some of the bigger agencies, even though I didn't have many TV credits under my belt.
^II
A lot of them said no, they couldn't represent me, because they were worried about my visa; in nine months, I could be sent back to India.

No, no, no, no.

And then, suddenly, out of the blue,
not
no.

Thursday: Met with a smaller agency. Clicked with an agent named Suzanne right away. She liked me and I liked her.

Friday, 11 a.m.: I was called in to sign papers with this agency.

Friday, 1 p.m.: Suzanne, my new agent for all of 120 minutes, called to say, “Kunal, we've got you an audition for a new pilot. It's for a new Chuck Lorre show.”

“Oh, that sounds great,” I said, not really knowing who Chuck Lorre was.

“The audition is on Monday,” she said. “I'll send you the sides; you'll have the weekend to prepare.”

“I'm going to book it for you,” I told her, smiling.

I'm going to book it for you.

We both laughed—who the hell did I think I was?

I didn't
really
have confidence that I would book the role, because frankly, I didn't even fully understand what was happening. I was just delighted to have an actual agent send me on an actual audition for an actual TV show. This lack of experience helped me. I was loose. I didn't know enough to grasp the importance of the moment and get nervous.

When I got the script for
Big Bang
, I read it and instantly loved it. For all the reasons lots of viewers love the show, I love it, too. Sharp writing. Engaging characters. The part they wanted me to audition for was, of course, a character named “David.” Yep, Raj was originally named David Koothrappali, and even though his last name sounded Indian, they were not looking for any specific ethnicity. I mean, when I walked into the audition it literally looked like a lineup for the new United Colors of Benetton campaign.

I had the weekend to prepare for this audition, and I went deep into my bag of acting tools. I broke down the character of David; I dissected him from every angle. Let's start with the accent. In the script he could have been from anywhere, but I knew that a lot of my strength lay in the cadence of my dialect, so I decided to
make him from India proper, and not just
from
India, but fresh off the boat. I imagined what my New Delhi accent would sound like if I were only a year or two removed from India—maybe how I'd sounded as a freshman in college.