-Our first guest tonight is an Academy-Award nominated writer
and Emmy-nominated actor you know from his work
in "Eternals," "The Big Sick," and "Silicon Valley."
He stars in "Welcome to Chippendales," which is
streaming now on Hulu, with additional episodes premiering
weekly on Tuesdays.
Let's take a look.
-Is this your place?
-Oh, this? Yeah.
I'm the owner.
-Wow.
-Are you having a good time?
-Just not my kind of place.
No offense.
-Not my kind of place either.
-Please welcome back to the show our friend Kumail Nanjiani.
♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back. -Thank you.
-How are you? -I'm great.
How are you? -I'm good.
How are you doing in the prep, the run-up to Thanksgiving?
It's a big week for a lot of people.
-It is a big week.
We're actually in the air on Thanksgiving Day.
-Oh, you're going to fly? -I'm going to fly home, yeah,
because it was either flying Wednesday, and that's supposed
to be very bad, right? -Yeah.
Could be a ghost town on Thursday, right?
-I hope so. -Yeah, that'd be exciting.
-That's why I'm excited, yeah.
But usually we do stuff for, you know --
We'll do stuff for Thanksgiving.
My parents get really into Thanksgiving, you know?
-Really? -They do.
And they're like, "You know, we have to put a lot of masala
on the turkey because we don't like how it tastes."
[ Laughter ]
I'm like, "You don't have to eat turkey."
They're like, "It's Thanksgiving."
[ Laughter ] I'm like, "You just got here.
Eat what you like." But they love it.
They got really into it.
I -- I'm not like a -- Oh, people are going to get upset.
I -- I think turkey is not, like, great-tasting.
-Yeah, I think you're right. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Oh, my God. Really? -Yeah.
Yeah, I think, like, the cat's out of the bag on turkey.
-Is that okay? -I think it's fine.
I mean, if it was good, we'd do it other times of the year.
[ Laughter ] -That's right.
If there's anything you eat once a year,
it's probably not that good. -Yeah, exactly.
-But I remember, you know, I like tweeted years ago,
I was like, "Let's face it. Turkey's not that good."
And people were like, "Go back to your country."
[ Laughter ] It was very intense.
I was like, "Okay. I won't.
I'll sit on my opinions about turkey.
I'll wait a few years."
If Mattel wins, now it's good again.
-Yeah, it's good again.
It's like everything's different in Biden's America.
You're allowed to say what you want about --
-Finally.
-You can finally say what you want about poultry again.
-Yeah. No, I'm good with chicken, you know.
I love chicken. It's just -- [ One person clapping ]
Turkey tastes like chicken.
-Sorry. We have one enthusiastic chicken fan.
-Love chicken. -Yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ]
They misread the room and thought there would be
a standing ovation -- -Yeah, for chicken.
-Chicken! Oh, just me. Just me. -Okay.
They just have a big Chick-fil-A bag.
[ Laughter ]
I feel like turkey tastes like chicken having a bad day.
-Yeah. -Although, you know, anything
you're eating probably had a bad day.
-Yeah. It's like a chicken --
[ Laughter ]
-Very recently.
It's like, you know, when you eat steak, you're like,
"Oh, this is like if a cow was like, 'Oh, no.'"
-Yeah. I know, it's true. Turkeys never -- I think it's
safe to say turkeys don't celebrate Thanksgiving.
-No. -Or ever talk about what
they're thankful for on that day.
-No. Except this time did you see Biden --
-Pardoned a couple, yeah. -Two!
-Yeah. -Called Chocolate and Chip,
which I think is very humiliating.
-Yeah. -Don't name turkeys
after better-tasting foods. [ Laughter ]
-That's true.
-Like undeniably chocolate chips are better than turkey.
-Do you think that when -- -This is my Hyundai.
It's called -- Lamborghini is the name of it.
[ Laughter ] -I think, though -- I feel like
if your turkeys -- I would just argue that what you should want
to be is named --
have a nice pairing name with another turkey.
That way if there's a pardoning situation,
you can't be in the situation -- I'm sure if Biden was like,
"It's either Chocolate or Chip." Biden would be like --
-We got to go them both. That's right.
Like, if there's a turkey named Abbott, I'm like,
"I'm going to be Costello because I think we're going to."
-"That way we might both get out of here."
-That was the only twosome I could think of.
-No, Abbott and Costello? -Yeah.
-Yeah, well, you're real Gen Z.
[ Laughter ]
So, this is a true story about
the founder of Chippendales, Steve Banerjee.
Did you know anything about --
I mean, I knew the basics about Chippendales.
-Which is what?
-Male dancing review, male strippers.
-Yes. -And I mean, I think
that's what most people know.
I don't know why it got weird in here.
-Yeah.
I mean, that's what I knew about it.
But it turns out... [ Laughter ]
There's even juicier your stuff behind the scenes
than men stripping, which -- -Whoo!
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-There's murder. You just whooed for murder.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-It's the same chicken person.
-Yeah, the chicken person's having a bad night.
-The chicken person is like, "I'm going to win him back.
I'm going to cheer for something and win him back."
It's not going to be chicken or murder.
Very anti-murder crowd.
Yeah, so the real guy who started Chippendales, I didn't
know, was this Indian immigrant who was very nerdy and awkward.
And behind-the-scenes story of it is wild, dude.
Like, people got murdered. He was setting fire.
So, people stole the idea of men stripping,
and he was like, "That's my idea."
So he started setting fire to other male strip clubs.
-It's a really funny thing to sort of consider
intellectual property,
the idea that you invented male stripping.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Like, in front of an audience, if a guy takes his clothes off,
"That's my idea. Otherwise, I'm going to burn you."
[ Laughter ]
But it's wild. He started off, you know --
He started a backgammon club first because he was like,
"There's no --" -Whoo!
[ Laughter ]
-Now we're just encouraging them.
-Yeah, we are. -[ Laughs ]
-Well, if it's the same chicken and murder person --
-Yeah. Whoever that is has the weirdest Yelp history.
[ Laughter ]
In New York looking for chicken, backgammon, and male stripping.
[ Cheers ]
-I thought you said yelp as in
because they were yelping actually.
But you meant like -- -I backed myself into
a classic two meanings.
[ Laughter ]
-Classic double entendre.
He started a backgammon club because he was like,
"Backgammon's a great game that I love,
and there are no backgammon clubs in L.A.,
so there's a whole market for it, right?"
And obviously, it didn't work.
He called it Destiny 2 because he was like --
-The name of the backgammon place?
-The name of the backgammon place was Destiny 2.
There was no Destiny 1, but he was like -- he was like,
"It's a sequel so people will think, oh, the first one was
so successful, I had to open Destiny 2."
There was no Destiny 1, and obviously, that didn't go well.
And then he got the idea for men stripping in front of women,
and then it became a huge hit.
-And so, the name Chippendales, as well, which again,
the first time I heard Chippendales was the dancers.
And then I realized it was a furniture --
like a famous furniture designer.
But he did name it after that, yes?
-Yeah, Thomas Chippendale. -Yeah.
-Thomas Chippendale was a renowned 18th-century
cabinet maker, and, like, royalty would have
his cabinets in their house, and this guy, Steve Banerjee,
was like -- He wanted to be, like, classy, you know?
And he was like men stripping for women
isn't inherently classy,
not that it's not, but it's not classy.
So he was like, "If I name it something super classy,
it'll trick people." -Yeah.
-Like, you know how people line up to go see,
like, fancy furniture at night?
[ Laughter ]
Like, ooh, bachelorette party.
Let's go see some furniture, you know?
We had some good wood on the show.
[ Laughter ]
-That's your yelp. That's your yelp.
I have a bunch more questions.
Let's let them -- Let's let them, you know, simmer in that.
-Yeah. Reset yourselves. [ Laughter ]
-We'll be right back with more from Kumail Nanjiani.