If anybody was the winner of the 2009-2019 Decade challenge, it was definitely Kumail Nanjiani. The comedian, actor, and executive producer sent shockwaves across social media right before Christmas when he Instagrammed a photograph of his new, jacked and juiced up body. The actor spent a year getting into shape with a trainer for his role in the new Marvel movie
The Eternals, and even though people couldn’t believe this was the same adorkable guy who won our hearts in
Silicon Valley and
The Big Sick, the most surprised person in the room was Kumail himself.“I’ve been terrified for like a year that I’m gonna sneeze and lose it,” he told Jimmy Kimmel on
Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday night.As he told the horrified audience about his dietary restrictions for the past year (“I haven’t had pizza or donuts in over a year! No refined sugar, no carbs at all!”), he explained why he needed to do it for the ‘gram. “It was like the week before Christmas, I don’t know if I’m ever going to look like this again, who knows what I’m going to look like after Christmas, so I was like, I wanna take a picture just so I have it. And as soon as I saw the picture, I was like ‘the world MUST
see this.’” And the world thanks you, my good man... ahem, sorry, where were we?
As he and Jimmy joked about how Twitter users lost their minds over his transformation (“They were like, ‘Can you believe this garbage human sea monster turned into this?’ Was I leaving a trail of slime behind me?”), he mentioned to Jimmy that in his year of hard work, the only treat he has been allowing himself has been the occasional bag of sugar snap peas. Ugh. We can confirm that is NOT a treat, Kumail.So Jimmy surprised him with perhaps the best thing ever—a mobile loaded with cakes, tarts, pastries, and pies, which swung gently around Kumail’s giddy head. Then Guillermo emerged from the wings to hand him his own personal pizza pie. His reaction was one of pure wholesome joy.“I’m literally gonna cry right now! I’m shaking!” he said before taking his first bite of pizza. “Hey, pizza is really good!” Welcome back to the land of the living, buddy!As the interview continued after the commercial break, Jimmy tried to talk about Kumail’s turn as executive producer for the new show
Little America, but Kumail was understandably distracted by all of the treats and spent the rest of the interview in unbridled bliss, stuffing his face.Kumail explained his rapturous joy in the best way possible: “You know, a couple years ago I was here because my wife and I made a movie called
The Big Sick, which was about, for people who don’t know, my wife was in a coma and we didn’t know what was gonna happen. And I remember very specifically the day we were like, ‘Is she gonna make it, is she gonna make it?’ And I remember when I got to the hospital one of those days, and she was up and sitting on her bed. I’m happier right now.”Welp, that confirms it: pizza is life.[video_embed id='1857813']Kumail Nanjiani’s ripped bod for Marvel has fans upset[/video_embed]
