You Can't Be Serious With Kal Penn

Tuckered Out with Ami Thakkar

It's a reunion!

Twenty years after being his production assistant on a film set in Austin, TX, Kal Penn and I get a chance to sit down and catch up about it all.

Kal Penn, is an American actor, author, academic lecturer and former White House staff member in the Barack Obama administration. You may know him from television shows such as House, Designated Survivor, Sunnyside, and How I Met Your Mother. He is also recognized for his performance in the film The Namesake and of course the Harold and Kumar series ( I personally still love Taj Mahal Badalandabad). Penn has taught at the University of Pennsylvania in the Cinema Studies Program as a visiting lecturer

We talk about it all from our first impressions, to those fantastic middle school years, to his job as a farmhand right before he went to UCLA. He talks about the meaning behind the Brown Catch-22, his journey with stereotyping in Hollywood, his experience going to India with President Barack Obama, and why he needed a mini-fridge in the White House.

We of course bust out with some Gujarati (our native Indian language) which Kal definitely schools me on.

His new memoir, You Can’t Be Serious, is out and it’s a fantastic read! There just wasn't enough time to give a shout out to all the uncles and aunties we loved growing up.....