You may know him as Kumar, a stoned accountant set
finding a White Castle or from House or Designated
Survivor or The Namesake. A whole tonKal Penn, also
called President Obama boss at the White House as a
staffer. And now pen sharing candid stories of his life
and career in the brand new memoir: "You Can't Be
serious. In a preview tonight I sat down with him to
ask about his long kept secret. Just revealed. You met
your soon to be husband josh in a D.C. Bar. I'm in
Washington as well. You have this like nice low key bar,
low key guy, Mississippi accent you fall in love over
beers and Newsy's He brought one for you on day two,
which kind of sealed the deal. How does it feel to
fling the door open after 11 years together and
actually tell the world about it. So it's the bar that
you mentioned. I wish it was still there. It's called
Town House Tavern between Dupont Logan. It literally
used to be this, it was a townhouse, the bottom two
levels were a divey bar. And I think if I remember
correctly in order to get the apartments upstairs, yo
have to walk through the bar. So there were people who
actually lived upstairs every day. I would just like
you see them coming home from work, you know just one
that it was a soup, one of those super quirky dc places
that I wish still existed. But yeah, well like I said,
we met, you know uh we met for a drink and then our,
our second date was supposed to be just come over come
over sunday afternoon right I was the white house and
at the time so some days are kind of your only day that
you can really stay home and either work from home or
take time off to your laundry all that. So he rolls up
with an 18 pack of Coors light and uh and I had
spongebob square pants on the T.V. Because I'm a
romantic and he like he changes the channel, puts on a
Nascar race and then puts the rest of the beers in the
fridge. And I was like did this just happen on
ironically like I grew up outside of new york city. We
don't really watch Nascar and this guy from Mississippi
rolls into my apartment and like touches my Tv and
Nascar. So I immediately was like obviously this isn't
gonna work out right, he brought 18 beers, I mean
they're going to be 16 left that he can take with him.
Um And we just started having a really great
conversation and first of all I was kinda interested in,
I do talk about this in the book. There was a what I
thought was a massive explosion in which one of the
drivers like obviously been seriously injured and he
just sort of like walks off dusts himself off. I'm like
okay that was actually pretty cool that that just kind
of happens but the real reason that we bonded was over
the idea that, you know, my parents are immigrants, we
didn't grow up with a lot of money, grew up outside of
new york city in a suburb. One of the family vacat
we would do was camping because camping is esse
free. Um you know, we pack a tent, pack up the station
wagon, go all over the northeast. Um and josh kind of
grew up in a, in a similar sense, he grew up in ru
Mississippi, but their camping trips would be to Nascar
races where they would camp out, watch these cars, go
around the track and for people who are two totally
different humans, like josh and I are the fact that you
can bond off of that shared experience of what it me
to be with family through something like camping
actually kind of like an unexpected icebreaker for us
to get to know each other. And like you mentioned,
we've been together for 11 years, you know, we've
actually been engaged for for about two years. I know
that it, it seems like it's new because obviously we,
we, you know, we talked about our, how we met and the
whole Nascar story in the book, which I'm very excited
for people to read. Um but he's a really quiet guy, you
know, similar to my parents who I'm so thankful that
they're supportive of my career, but Whatever they and
Josh is in the same boat here, whatever, they've co
to my movie premieres or whatever we do anything work
related, they sort of like we get out of the car and
I've got to do all the press and talk to people about
the movie and they're like, we're gonna grab popcorn
and looked through the side and see you inside at the
seats. Like we don't want any of that. So part of the
reason that I didn't share early on is out of respect
to Josh. And of course a lot of the stories about my
parents in the book, also out of respect to them that I
said, you know, the purpose of writing this book is for
the 20 year old meat. You know the kid who never really
had a guidebook on how do you become an actor as a man
of color And then the crazy things that I think wheth
you're 20 or not that many of us feel especially comi
out of a pandemic. Am I satisfied with my job What's
the crazy thing that I want to do with my life that
everyone's told me I shouldn't do that if you look at
the job market and all these articles, counselor.
Or my guidance counselor, but so many people right now
are saying, do I want to shake my job up, do I want to
do that thing I've always been passionate about. S
this book is also for them and I'm really excited tha
all of these stories are coming together uh in a way
that it sounds like you enjoy it, which makes me happy.