I plotted an escape from the hotel.
First step: I crept down to the empty lobby in the middle of the night and settled my bill with the front desk. That way I’d have the best chance of noticing if someone was watching me. But I didn’t officially check out, so I could mislead everyone into thinking I was still in my room. In the morning, I could disappear without any fanfare. If anyone did ask, I would say I was going to run an errand or visit family. I had this thing all figured out.
At 11 a.m., six hours before I was supposed to be picked up, I took the $11,000 out of the safe and counted it again. It was all still there. I put my laptop, passport, and the cash in my backpack, and walked down fourteen flights of stairs. I slipped out a side door, feeling ten percent like Jason Bourne and ninety percent like Kevin McCallister sneaking out of the Plaza in Home Alone 2. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.
Through an alley and around the corner from the hotel, I hailed a rickshaw. In passable Hindi, with my luggage and my backpack full of dead presidents, I told the driver to take me to the international airport, fast. I checked in early and cleared security, hopeful that Gangster Producer’s reach didn’t extend this far.
I boarded the plane and breathed a sigh of relief. I was in the clear! Away from Gangster Producer, Teeny Panda Giraffe Uncle—even the immigration auntie who called me fat. I was ready to get apologized to by British people on the return flight to LA.
As the plane approached LAX, customs forms were distributed. （“So sorry, sir, we should have handed these out sooner.”）
I’ve filled out these forms many times. They’re straightforward: No, I’m not bringing any snails or other wildlife with me. No, I haven’t been in close proximity to livestock. But when I came across question thirteen, my stomach dropped: Are you carrying currency or monetary instruments over $10,000 U.S. or foreign equivalent: □ Yes □ No
I have $11,000 with me! I have to check the Yes box. What does that mean?! I turned the form over as instructed. “The transportation of currency or monetary instruments, regardless of the amount, is legal. However, if you bring in to or take out of the United States more than $10,000, you are required by law to file a report on FinCEN 105 with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” That’s fine, right? This is my legal pay. That I earned.
I felt so shady. Was it legal to be paid in cash like this, or just to carry the cash? What if the bills that Teeny Panda Giraffe Uncle gave me were actually fake? These dudes already forged bank escrow documents. Now I was going to be transporting these fake bills through customs into the United States. This was not good.
I declared the $11,000 on the customs form and waited in line, sweating the whole time. My turn came. I was assigned to a twenty-four-year-old customs officer named Parker who immediately lost his damn mind. “I’m a huge movie fan, especially comedies, bro! Especially comedies. Hahahaha, whaaaat!?! How is Kal Penn in my line right now? This is so crazy! You don’t have any weed with you, right? Hahaha, that would be sick if I got to bust Kumar for weed.”
I love my fans unconditionally, but I must have looked super annoyed. Officer Parker took a deep breath, acting like the last thirty-eight seconds hadn’t happened. “So, what brings you here today, sir. You have something to declare?”
I had to be completely transparent. I told Officer Parker the entire story of the $11,000 in cash I was carrying: about the wire transfers and escrow, Gangster Producer’s lies, the forged documents, the bank holiday excuses （“I mean how many bank holidays does India have?”）， and Teeny Panda Giraffe Uncle dropping off the two bags of $5,500, “which I hope is not counterfeit cash.”
At each juncture in the story, Officer Parker looked more crestfallen. By the end, he seemed fully depressed. His eyes were brimming with a quiet disappointment as he let out a long, delicate sigh. “Kal Penn only makes $11,000 for a movie?”
“This project was about the art!” I shot back.
“Apparently.”
Officer Parker awkwardly took the bills into a back room and verified that they were, thankfully, real. As he handed the stack of cash back to me, he whispered, “You guys should make another one of those movies. Maybe Harold & Kumar Smuggle a Tiny Amount of Money into America,” and burst out laughing to himself once more.
1?Immigrant Indians and their children rarely ask for ice. You get more drink that way.
2?If I can even use such an absurd phrase to describe something that’s still so one percent.
3?I heard yes!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO （pea） COCK BLOCKED
I’m standing in a lofty writers’ room on the third floor of a modern glass building at the edge of the Universal Studios lot, completely fulfilled. I’m making a comedy for NBC, one of America’s most iconic television networks, the one I used to watch Family Ties, Seinfeld, Diff’rent Strokes, and NewsRadio on. This comedy is mine, I cocreated it, I’m acting in it, I’m executive producing it. As if I needed one, I get a reminder every morning about how blessed I am and how far I’ve come when I pull onto the lot and slide into my own parking spot with my name on it right next to my own trailer. I smile so widely with such deep happiness and gratitude that I let out a little laugh. Every morning.
At the end of each day, my smile is even bigger. It reflects the creativity of the talented cast and writing team I’ve spent all day with. It still feels surreal to have been able to hire what we’re told is the most diverse writers’ room and cast in network television history. And because of this diversity, I find that I never have to justify myself or set up a cultural reference point. I never have to overexplain that actually no, this joke I pitched has no ethnic or racial signifiers. In this group of talented artists, I just get to be.
When I leave in the evenings, I don’t head out the way I came in. I always back out of my parking spot and go a few hundred feet past our soundstage, so I can drive through Back to the Future’s Courthouse Square. This home of the famous clock tower that powered Marty and Doc through space-time happens to be just past our building, so I make the pilgrimage each night, taking Middle School Me along. I roll down the windows and the warm California air runs across my face, drying my still-wet skin, a result of the makeup wipes that close out each shooting day. I usually drive a full loop and a half around Hill Valley, through the square once, then past the sign that says LYON ESTATES before disappearing through a parking lot bordering facades of a Brooklyn street, and onto Lankershim Boulevard and the 101 Freeway. I live each day with the excitement of what it means to be part of this world. Television is magic. I am fulfilled by my reality beyond measure.
* * *
Designated Survivor （the political conspiracy drama on Netflix in which I played a press secretary） was going into its third and final season when I began to work on a pitch for a long-simmering idea for my own sitcom. The basics were this: A down-and-out guy who is trying to get his life in order ends up teaching a US citizenship class to pay his rent; I wanted it to be forward-looking, aspirational, and patriotic. I was somewhat influenced by my childhood love of shows like Head of the Class and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Rather than being overly edgy or cynical （as lots of great comedy can be）， those shows always had a way of making the audience feel good by the time they turned off their televisions at night. It wasn’t just the episodes that I loved, it was the experience of watching them—gathering around the TV with the whole family on a specific night of the week, at a particular time; going to school the next morning and repeating some of the funniest lines with my friends, knowing that they too had watched the episode with their families at the very same time.