You ever get night thoughts? That’s what Kumail Nanjiani calls them. They’re the kind of thoughts that keep you up at night – half-baked, often brought on by stress, and usually best forgotten by morning.
But one thought kept sticking. After more than a decade away, it was time for him to return to stand-up comedy – and to do it more honestly and with more vulnerability than ever before.
Still, the prospect was terrifying. “For a while I was like, maybe I can't do it again. Maybe I don't have it any more,” Nanjiani tells The National. The problems were twofold. For one, he hadn’t released a stand-up special since 2013’s Beta Male, and had forgotten how to even do it.
“Writing stand-up is a particular thing – it’s different from writing movies or television. Relearning how to do it was very hard. I’d lost my confidence,” he continues.
In that time, the Pakistani-American comedian’s life and career transformed. After the breakout success of HBO’s Silicon Valley in 2014, his time was focused on film and television, and his trajectory seemed stratospheric.
In 2018, he and his wife Emily V Gordon were nominated for an Academy Award for their film The Big Sick, based on their real-life experiences with cancer and cross-cultural marriage. From there, he became a leading man – starring in the successful Stuber opposite Dave Bautista, and even transforming into a Marvel superhero for 2021’s Eternals. From there, he and Emily created the acclaimed Little America for Apple TV+.
But could he still do comedy? He wasn't yet sure. “It took a while to get there. I knew my goal – I wanted to be as personal and vulnerable as I could possibly be. But it wasn’t until a few months of doing it again that I had my first joke that I thought might be good,” he says.
“I thought – OK, I know this is funny, and this is about as well as I can do. If I can do this one joke, I can do the rest. That’s when I started getting up the confidence again to do another hour of stand-up.”
The joke was pulled from real life and was about a group of people swimming in his pool after breaking into his house. And it was funny, but it wasn’t vulnerable. Total honesty still eluded him.
In part, that’s because he was still working through the pain. As his career flourished, he became a laughing stock in certain circles – with many mocking him for his dramatic body transformation for Eternals – a film that ultimately became Marvel’s first commercial and critical flop. As he jokes in his new special: “I think I’m the first person in history to be mocked for getting in shape.”
It hurt – more than he was ready to admit, and far more than it probably should have. He even started going to therapy, realising that too much of his self-worth was wrapped up in what strangers thought about him.
And when he talked about it on a podcast, people mocked him for that, too – even major news outlets such as Variety got in on the action. He wanted to avoid the subject altogether. But once again, his wife Emily pushed him through.
“It was something that I was very sensitive about. I didn’t want to talk about it. But Emily was the one who was like, ‘you need to talk about this, because other people talk about it. This is your moment to really address it and talk about it on your own terms, with your own point of view and your own perspective on it,” Nanjiani says.
“That’s the thing I was most scared to talk about – along with going to therapy and dealing with this – because it’s this big vulnerable thing to be on stage. I had to go up there and say, ‘people were like this, and it hurt my feelings'. And not being strong was really, really hard.
“But once I started doing It, I started feeling the power in it. I think admitting your own weakness is strength."
And with the comedy special Night Thoughts – released today on Disney+ – having earned a nomination at the 2026 Golden Globes, not to mention a starring role in season two of Fallout, he feels vindicated and ready to bring the strength of vulnerability into the next projects he and Emily are working on. Their new kitten Mittens will be by their side after the death of their beloved companion Bagel in September.
“It’s changed the way I write. Now, when I write stuff, even if it’s not explicitly autobiographical or about my life, I’m able to put a lot more of myself into it than I’d ever been able to before. I’m realising – oh, if I go really, really personal, that is the stuff that’s interesting to people.
“Doing stand-up again has actually paid dividends for me in all my writing. I’m realising it’s not worth doing anything unless I’m putting pieces of myself into it – because then anybody can write it. What’s important for me is: how can I write in a way that only I can write?”
Night Thoughts is streaming now on Disney+
