Chloé Zhao Lied To Kumail Nanjiani About This Scene In The Eternals
With Marvel's latest film, "Eternals," viewers are taken on a whole new journey unlike any Marvel film before, largely due to its visionary director, Chloé Zhao. The Oscar-winning director stuck to the same filming process she used in works like "Nomadland" and "The Rider" and also chose stunning locations to film, resulting in some pretty amazing visuals. Add in the film's spectacularly diverse cast, and you get a truly unique Marvel movie.
In case you didn't know, "Eternals" follows a group of galactic superheroes who have been on Earth for thousands of years protecting humans from monsters called Deviants. One of the actors who makes up the diverse group of superheroes, Kumail Nanjiani, went through quite the "Eternals" transformation. Not only did he have to undergo the notorious Marvel training to get jacked, but he also had to brush up on his dancing skills for a particular scene. Interestingly, he was unaware of the sequence until he showed up to set, thanks to Zhao.
Kumail Nanjiani was told he would be doing a Bollywood action scene
In an interview with Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show," Kumail Nanjiani is pretty honest about his dancing skills, or lack thereof. So when "Eternals" director Chloé Zhao approached him about doing a huge, elaborate Bollywood dance number, he asked her quite candidly, "Can we do something else?" In response, she said they would instead do a Bollywood action sequence, but as it turns out, Zhao isn't afraid to lie to her actors. When Nanjiani arrived in London to begin production, he was, in fact, doing the Bollywood dance routine — not the action scene. Zhao had even put her little white lie into the script, which probably confused Nanjiani even more when he got to the set, and they were actually there to film a dance number. Nanjiani hilariously told Fallon, "She lied to me. She put a lie in the script. She printed out the lie."
Nanjiani goes on to explain that he trained for four months with a dance teacher and the whole experience was rather emotional for him. He explained, "So many years, you barely have any South Asian people, and then suddenly there's like 52 of us in one scene, you know? It was awesome!" Despite Nanjiani's initial apprehension to the dance, the elaborate scene proved to be truly entertaining and was a fantastic way to introduce Nanjiani's character, Kingo, and you can see it for yourself in theaters right now.