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First, a moment of silence. The beloved cat of the actor-comedian Kumail Nanjiani<\/a> died three months ago. Her name was Bagel. She was seventeen.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the saddest I\u2019ve ever been in my whole life,\u201d Nanjiani said one recent evening, his eyes dewy. He was sitting in a large wooden cubby at a Lower East Side cat caf\u00e9 called Meow Parlour. Felines roamed the room. Keeping Nanjiani company was a tortoiseshell kitty named Honeybee. A golden stripe sloped down her nose. \u201cOh, my God, look how pretty that is,\u201d he marvelled.<\/p>\n Nanjiani, who had on a navy-blue shirt and jeans, was in town to talk about his new standup special, \u201cNight Thoughts,\u201d on Hulu. His first in twelve years, it veers through musings on anxiety, concerts, drugs, and Bagel. \u201cI hadn\u2019t missed standup, but I missed being good at it,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was the feeling I didn\u2019t like. And I thought, Let me see if this is still something I enjoy.\u201d It was.<\/p>\n He kept busy in the interim. Since releasing the special \u201cBeta Male,\u201d in 2013, he has played a coder on HBO\u2019s \u201cSilicon Valley,\u201d a Christmas-obsessed influencer on \u201cOnly Murders in the Building,\u201d and himself in \u201cThe Big Sick<\/a>.\u201d He even had a run as Abraham Lincoln in Cole Escola<\/a>\u2019s play \u201cOh, Mary!\u201d Nanjiani, who is forty-seven, described that as \u201ca joyful and exhausting experience.\u201d The drag queen Jinkx Monsoon, who co-starred as the cabaret-loving Mary Todd, said, \u201cKumail has the energy of the smartest child you know, and the sense of humor of the dumbest adult you know.\u201d She added, \u201cHis masculinity doesn\u2019t need to be proved.\u201d<\/p>\n Nanjiani spent a chunk of time in the late twenty-tens bulking up for the role of Kingo\u2014a million-year-old superhero-slash-Bollywood actor\u2014in the 2021 Marvel film \u201cEternals<\/a>,\u201d directed by Chlo\u00e9 Zhao<\/a>. His physical revamp gripped the world. \u201cAnother beloved schlub disappeared,\u201d a Times<\/em> reporter lamented.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople thought I<\/em> had changed,\u201d Nanjiani said, exasperated. \u201cBut I\u2019m the exact same person.\u201d (Scripture for any nerd who gets hot.) The beta had become an alpha.<\/p>\n \u201cBeta Male\u201d covered animals, too. (\u201cMost birthdays in Pakistan, a monkey shows up,\u201d Nanjiani says, in a hoodie. Beat. \u201cThe fact that you just accepted that is racist.\u201d) But the jokes largely stayed on the surface. \u201cThat special was the greatest hits of the first twelve years of me doing comedy,\u201d he said. With \u201cNight Thoughts,\u201d he digs deeper. After years of therapy, he explained, \u201cI was, like, \u2018O.K., what are all the things that are hard for me to talk about?\u2019 One of them was my cat being sick.\u201d Bagel takes up about ten minutes of the hour-long special. \u201cThat material was genuinely difficult for me to do every time,\u201d he said. It has inspired his latest goal: doing a dramatic play. \u201cI want to have real emotions in front of a crowd,\u201d he said. (\u201cI could see him as Henry the Fifth,\u201d Monsoon said.) A tuxedo cat padded over\u2014named Downy, after the fabric softener.<\/p>\n Nanjiani and his wife, the writer Emily V. Gordon, have recently adopted a kitten named Biscuit. It\u2019s been an adjustment. \u201cBagel was always a dignified cat, and this cat has no dignity,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a dumbass.\u201d Honeybee, bored or offended, walked away.<\/p>\n On his way out, Nanjiani noted a tiny white kitten; an attendant said that she was up for adoption and that her name was Bridget. \u201cI wish I lived here,\u201d Nanjiani said. All for the best, though: \u201cI don\u2019t like human names for animals. I find it unsettling.\u201d He pointed to a mature brindle. \u201cWho\u2019s this big guy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Joy,\u201d the attendant responded.<\/p>\n \u201cI just got a five-month-old tabby,\u201d Nanjiani said, whipping out his phone. \u201cCan I show you a picture?\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n<\/div>\n First, a moment of silence. The beloved cat of the actor-comedian Kumail Nanjiani died three months ago. Her name was Bagel. She was seventeen. \u201cThat\u2019s the saddest I\u2019ve ever been in my whole life,\u201d Nanjiani said one recent evening, his eyes dewy. He was sitting in a large wooden cubby at a Lower East Side … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Kumail-Nanjiani-Lets-It-Out-of-the-Bag.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13646,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13644\/revisions\/13646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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