Kumail Nanjiani draws the line at becoming a Chippendales dancer.
The Big Sick the actor, 45, revealed in an interview for Hey! News ahead of the 2023 Emmy Awards that despite starring in the show about the Chippendales dancers — he wouldn’t consider taking on the role in real life.
“No, I’ve never taken off my clothes. No, I’ve never done that on the show either.” Nanjiani shared, further adding that he “wouldn’t be good at it.”
“I can barely get dressed and undressed every day,” he admitted. “Looking sexy is like… I’m an awkward – physically awkward person.”
Kumail Nanjiani in ‘Welcome to the Chippendales’. Erin Simkin/Hulu Watch PEOPLE & Entertainment Weekly’s live red carpet coverage of the 75th Emmy Awards
On the Hulu show Welcome to Chippendales, The 45-year-old actor plays Somen “Steve” Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who founded a male stripping empire. The series follows Banerjee’s legacy, which was shrouded in greed, scandal and murder as a result of the competition that arose from the instant success of a strip club during the early 1980s.
Nanjiani said earlier vanity fair on the role: “This is by far the most challenging job I’ve ever done, in terms of the length of the shoot, the content of the scenes, and the emotional weight of those scenes. It’s one of those things where I just jumped into it, and trusted that it would reveal itself as it went along—and it is.”
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It’s just one of many projects that Nanjiani and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, have teamed up to produce, along with The Big Sick. However, the couple told Hey! News that working together can have its challenges and that in order for their projects to be successful, they must “have a lot of rules”.
“That’s the most important thing,” Gordon said. “You have to have rules about when you can talk about business and not when you can talk about business in bed. And do your best not to make a face, because apparently I have a face to make in Kumail . . .”
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“That’s the hardest part of working together,” Nanjiani continued. “We know each other so well by face. It’s like I say something and I say, ‘You’re making that face…'”
“It’s like reading minds,” he added. “You just have to be— make the rules, be careful.”
Watch PEOPLE’s complete coverage of the 75th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards as it airs live on Fox from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
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Source: HIS Education