Kumail Nanjiani is a Pakistani-American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and podcaster. He was born and raised in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. At 18, he moved to the U.S. and enrolled at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, where he graduated in 2001 with a double major in computer science and philosophy. He then moved to Chicago and began performing stand-up comedy at open-mic events. In 2007, Nanjiani wrote and staged an original autobiographical one-man show in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. After moving to New York, he continued to perform stand-up and made occasional appearances on shows including Michael & Michael Have Issues and The Colbert Report.
Nanjiani is known for his role as Dinesh on HBO's comedy series Silicon Valley and for co-writing and starring in the romantic comedy The Big Sick. For co-writing the latter with his wife, Emily V. Gordon, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2018, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Nanjiani voiced Prismo in the animated series Adventure Time, and starred in the TNT series Franklin & Bash, and the Adult Swim series Newsreaders. He co-hosted the Comedy Central show The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail, as well as played various roles in the comedy series Portlandia. He also starred as Kingo in the Marvel Studios superhero film Eternals (2021), which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), starred as street-level con artist Haja Estree in the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, and played celebrity scientist Vik in the television series The Boys and The Boys Presents: Diabolical.
