'It Was Really, Really Hard': Kumail Nanjiani Sought Therapy After Poor Eternals Reviews
Kumail Nanjiani went to therapy after the bad reviews for 'Eternals'.
The 45-year-old actor played the part of Kingo in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) blockbuster but explained that promoting a film that did not impress audiences took such a toll on his mental health that he sought help from a counsellor.
Kumail told 'Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum': "The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it.
"It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, so they lifted the embargo early and put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour to promote the movie right as the embargo lifted."
Kumail questioned if the criticism of the film was related to the "actual quality" of the picture and thinks the reaction was "unfair" for both him and his wife Emily V. Gordon.
The 'Welcome to Chippendales' actor said: "I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie.
"It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to Emily, and I can't approach my work this way anymore.
"So I started counselling. I still talk to my therapist about that."
Kumail continued: "Emily says that I do have trauma from it. We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, 'That was tough, wasn't it?', and he's like, 'Yeah, that was really tough', and I think we all went through something similar."