Actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani has revealed that the overwhelmingly negative reviews for Disney’s superhero movie Eternals traumatized him to such an extent that he still talks to his therapist about it.
Kumail Nanjiani, who played the superhero Kingo in the 2021 Marvel release, spoke about his trauma during a recent interview on the “Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum” podcast.
“It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed,” the actor said. “So they lifted the embargo really early and put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo lifted.”
“The reviews were bad… I was too aware of it,” he added. “I was reading every review and checking too much.”
Disney promoted Eternals by emphasizing the diverse casting as well as the fact that it contains Marvel’s first gay on-screen kiss between two men. Not only did critics slam the movie, audience enthusiasm failed to materialize, resulting in a major box-office disappointment for Disney.
“I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not very much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie,” Nanjiani said. “Anyway, it was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me, it’s unfair to [my wife] Emily, I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some shit’s gotta change, so very intentionally I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that.”
“Emily says that I do have trauma from it,” he continued. “Emily and I just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, ‘That was tough, wasn’t it?’ and he’s like ‘Yeah, that was really tough,’ and I think we all went through something kind of similar.”
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