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 "The Big Sick" explores Nanjiani's cultural
conflict as a Pakistani Muslim comedian in a post-9/11 America.
His life is further complicated when he falls in love with
Gordon, played by Zoe Kazan, and goes against his family's
wishes that he marry a Pakistani woman.
The film, out in limited U.S. release on Friday, is "coming out
at a time when there's a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment, there's a
lot of Islamophobia," Nanjiani said in an interview.
"By depicting a Muslim family as like normal people, that's its
big political statement," said Nanjiani, who is also the first
Pakistani leading man in a Hollywood romantic comedy.
The movie arrives after U.S. President Donald Trump's call
during his 2016 election campaign for a "total and complete
shutdown of Muslims entering the United States"
Now in the White House, Trump is seeking to ban travelers from
six Muslim-majority countries in a case awaiting a U.S. Supreme
Court decision.
Nanjiani, 39, best known for playing snarky programmer Dinesh in
HBO's comedy "Silicon Valley," and Gordon said they did not
predict the film would wade into a hot-button issue.
"It obviously feels so weirdly timely but it also does have this
expectation on it that it really wasn't built for," Nanjiani
said.
"Really, it's just a love story."
In "The Big Sick," Nanjiani's family struggle with his decision
to pursue comedy as they try to arrange a suitable marriage,
while he secretly dates the smart, nerdy Emily.
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 Nanjiani's world is upended when Emily falls
into a coma with an undiagnosed illness and he keeps a bedside
vigil alongside her parents.
"I think that Kumail is trying to show how similar their lives
are to people who already live here in some respects. They're
looking for love and they're trying to be happy and they're also
dealing with their culture," Judd Apatow, the film's producer
said.
In one scene, Nanjiani is heckled during his
stand-up comedy routine by a man calling him a terrorist. In
another, Ray Romano, who plays Gordon's father, asks Kumail about
his stance on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
"Anti. It was a tragedy," Nanjiani said, before quipping, "I mean,
we lost 19 of our best guys."
"The Big Sick" arrives as Hollywood films such as "Get Out" and
"Wonder Woman" are starting to break the white, male-dominated movie
mold and show that audiences will pay to see films with minority
leads.
"It's important for kids to see themselves in the stuff they watch.
But more than that, I think it's important that people from
different points of view are behind the camera telling the stories,
writing them, directing them," Nanjiani said.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Richard Chang)
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