Shooting A Lot Like Love was a wonderful experience with very nice people. Nobody mentioned the audition incident on set, although Lauren and I will often reminisce about it. （She’s now a casting director in her own right, and still very horrified about that day.） Ashton was an absolute gentleman, as was Nigel. And the quick scene in which I woo and charm the woman on the plane follows me around to this day. The part of that woman was played by a young fellow up-and-comer named Meghan Markle, and from what I remember of that enjoyable day of filming, we were as friendly as two actors of color with small roles could be.
* * *
A few weeks after my short stint on A Lot Like Love, I got an offer for a supporting role in Jamie Kennedy’s next movie, Son of the Mask.
Jamie is an outgoing stand-up comic, with a perfect command of bizarre characters and ridiculous situations （like the time he played a waiter who had his mouth wired open and drooled on everyone’s food on his hilarious prank show The Jamie Kennedy Experiment）。 We initially met on the set of Malibu’s Most Wanted,9 and we hit it off so well that when I booked Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, we asked Jamie to play a weird disheveled guy in a suit who pees on a bush in a forest next to Kumar. So, when Jamie was set to play the lead in Son of the Mask, he recommended me for the role of Jorge, a computer techie.
The part was pretty straightforward. Jorge was just there to support Jamie’s character, in scenes spaced throughout the movie. My salary would cover a few months’ rent, I’d get to spend some time with my friend, and the film was shooting in Australia—a place I hadn’t been and sounded exciting!
* * *
I landed in Sydney, took a quick shower, and went to my first rehearsal. I was greeted by the cheery director. He was short and—not to be a dick about it but—smiled a lot in a stupid sort of way. If there was a sound to go along with this director’s grin, it would be one of those old Warner Bros. cartoon dogs, uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. This guy had a lot of energy. He wore two large hearing aids, a faded T-shirt, and comfortable-looking jeans with running shoes. My first impression of him during the audition was that he had a boring personality, which is rare for someone in a creative leadership position. This was confirmed once we sat down to go over the role. Because, as if this was the most goddamn brilliant genius idea any human had ever come up with in his life, he excitedly said, “So… I decided that Jorge should have an Indian accent! Uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.”
This bullshit again.
I put on a game face and did the three things I had become accustomed to doing in these situations: 1） Ask why my character needs to have an accent even though I knew the answer （because it would make it so much funnier!10）， 2） Offer to instead help make the character funny on the merits of who he is, and 3） Pitch any number of other accents I could do besides Indian: Boston? Yiddish? Australian?
Director Original Ideas McGee had a predictable response: “No, that wouldn’t be very authentic.”
I raised my voice a few times about why I didn’t want to play this role with an Indian accent before saying to myself, You know what, I just wrapped Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. I didn’t do A Lot Like Love the way the casting director hoped. I don’t need to regress into a role with a reductionist accent, and I don’t need to waste my energy getting upset. I sent Dan Spilo a straightforward email: “Please call production and have them fly me home, I’m obviously not playing a role like this. Sucks to lose the money, but I’ll figure it out. I’ll be in my hotel room packing and will be ready to roll to the airport ASAP. Thank you.”
We were supposed to start shooting a week later, and out of respect to my friend Jamie—for whom I wished success—I wanted to make sure Original Ideas McGee could cast someone else who was okay with the stereotypical accent he wanted. Surely there were other brown actors for whom this could be a way to break out of the Brown Catch-22.
Then my phone rang. It was Dan.
“Bad news. The studio is saying if you left, you’d be in breach of contract since they flew you to work in Australia already. This really isn’t worth damaging your reputation over. It sucks, but you need to stick it out and do the character the way they want.”
“Damage my reputation? I’m not the asshole telling an actor to do some racist buffoonery because I’m not talented enough to come up with something better!” I was pissed. “Dan, I’m not fucking doing it. I’ve had it with this! I’m not breaking My Middle School Me Rule!” I hung up.
Reality set in with a call from my lawyer: Getting sued for breach of contract was a big deal, often designed as a deterrent. The studio could go after me for millions of dollars, which obviously I didn’t even have. I had to suck it up and do the accent.
* * *
Once we started shooting I made it a point to perform as light an Indian accent as possible. I’m talking barely noticeable. No way was I going to give them a full Apu. If these guys weren’t going to let me leave, I was at least going to fight creatively for a somewhat-grounded character. Maybe over time, the great chemistry that Jamie and I have could shine through.
We did a few takes of the barely noticeable accent on my first day, and Original Ideas McGee yelled, “Cut! Kal, I don’t think I heard an accent!” He lifted his left hand to cup his ear just behind the hearing aid. “Did you do one?” The way he did this reminded me of Portly Pete, the older guy with hearing aids who sat next to me at my pre-college telemarketing job, exasperatedly asking, “What did he say? I can’t hear shit!” any time Skeezy Big Bird and Sad Joe Pesci made a speech. For a moment, I thought about my day on that job, and how awful it felt working for shady guys who lied to old people all day long.
This gave me an idea: I could lie to this buffoon.
ORIGINAL IDEAS MCGEE: Did you do the accent?
ME: Of course I did—this accent is so funny!
ORIGINAL IDEAS MCGEE: I didn’t hear it, Kal! Make it thicker and louder in the next take!
ME: Of course, of course! You’ve got it, boss. I’ll make it thicker and louder!
We did another take. Instead of thickening my accent, I made my eyes much wider and bobbed my head the way other white directors had asked me to do in the past. Original Ideas McGee saw my minstrel nonsense and because he couldn’t hear well, assumed I actually made the accent thicker. He was very delighted. This went on every day: I would do a light accent → he couldn’t hear well and would ask if I was doing one at all → I would make my eyes wide without thickening the accent → he’d believe I was speaking with a thicker accent because he couldn’t hear well and was boring and a bigot and probably has a tiny penis. Uh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
If you’re a masochist, you can force yourself to watch the DVD commentary of Son of the Mask and, just after the fourteen-minute mark, hear a very candid Jamie recount to Original Ideas McGee: “We would argue with Kal between takes because he didn’t wanna do an Indian accent. Because he’s like [bad Indian accent], ‘I am not trying to be an Indian,’ and he got so mad. We went, ‘Do it more Indian!’ He got really mad at us. And we would, like, say, ‘Just be Indian, it was funnier!’ Anyway, he got mad.”