6 Oct 2015 by Malika Rao, Arts reporter for The Huffington Post
LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 20: Actor Kunal Nayyar signs his new book “Yes, My Accent Is Real” at Barnes & Noble at The Grove on September 20, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vincent Sandoval/Getty Images) via HuffPost
Kunal Nayyar, the shy astrophysicist who rules Monday nights, talks girls and grit in his new memoir.
During a recent segment on our very own HuffPost Live, a girl called in with seemingly nothing to say. She was blonde and looked to be in her teens, but it wasn’t easy to tell since she was covering half her face with her hands, struggling to collect herself. Stammering through tears, she finally explained that she simply couldn’t believe she was talking to Kunal Nayyar himself.
On “The Big Bang Theory,” 34-year-old Nayyar plays Rajesh Koothrappali, or Raj, a woman-fearing astrophysicist with a dry wit shared only with his nearest and dearest. In real life, he’s a bonafide heartthrob, not to mention one of Hollywood’s highest paid television actors.
Nayyar’s unlikely trajectory from an ordinary life in Delhi to starring in the second most-watched show on American television serves as fodder enough for his first book, . Released last month, the collection of autobiographical essays is earnest when it’s not breezy: part subcontinental “Sandlot,” part transcontinental Horatio Alger, full of recollections of childhood crushes — on real and fictional girls — and a litany of crummy jobs all too real for any aspiring actor.
Then there is the meta-narrative of the book itself, which constitutes selling power for an untested author. Our hero might look and sound like the shy guy on that primetime sitcom about geeks, but as is often the case, the man behind the character is more complicated than television makes him out to be.
The Huffington Post recently sat down with Nayyar to discuss the overlapping influences that have led to such an unusual life, from Winnie Cooper to the Hollywood-ready wisdom of his dad.
One of my favorite sections in the book is about the Indian sibling festival Raksha Bandhan, and how your girl pals essentially friendzoned you with rakhi bracelets meant for brothers. I love that anecdote because it’s one Raj could easily tell.
100 percent.
Of course, you ended up marrying Miss India, and Raj still barely talks to women. It’s become a popular sticking point, this gap between your love lives. Do you think there’s truth to what the actor Utkarsh Ambudkar once told HuffPost, that the industry has trouble seeing ethnically Indian men as sexual beings?
Does Hollywood have that perception? I’m not sure. I can’t speak for what the perception is, but it’s not my perception. I can sexualize anyone.