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Following his White House gig, Kal Penn returns to acting
“A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas” is Kal Penn’s first movie in three years. But that doesn’t mean the actor who’s best known for playing the world’s most fervent weed smoker has spent the last 36 months lighting up, slacking off and wolfing down White Castle hamburgers.
Penn, who neither smokes marijuana nor eats meat, is coming off a stint working for President Barack Obama as an associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. In Washington, he served in a number of different capacities, including as a liaison to arts communities, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
So, what was it like going from staff meetings with the Commander-in-Chief to revisiting a character who spends his days more than half-baked?
“It was a little tougher for me this time around because it’s been three years since we shot the last movie,” says Penn, 34. “We also set the movie six years after the last one, so it was a bit of a challenge to re-discover Kumar and try to figure out what’s been happening to him in these intervening years.”
Making Penn’s assignment even trickier was the fact that he and John Cho (Harold) didn’t have any scenes together for the first two weeks of shooting. “I’m so used to playing Kumar with Harold,” says Penn during a telephone interview from Philadelphia. “This time I had to discover Kumar’s independence.”
At the outset of “A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas,” Harold has left the slacker lifestyle behind. He’s married, employed and the owner of a nice house in the ’burbs. Kumar, by contrast, is out of work, barely getting by and living in the same apartment he once shared with Harold.
The two might have grown apart, but they’re soon reunited when a mysterious package for Harold is delivered to Kumar by mistake. After sampling the “high grade” contents, the pals get themselves into a jam when a Christmas tree belonging to Harold’s father-in-law goes up in smoke. Thus begins an ill-advised journey through New York City in search of the perfect replacement tree.
“Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” (2004) and its 2008 sequel, “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay,” are far from mind-teasers. But, in their own ways, the movies addressed issues of race and politics.
Do the guys tackle religion this time around?
“I never thought that we took on religion as much as we took on the traditions of Christmas movies like ‘A Christmas Story’ or the claymation specials we all grew up with,” says Penn. “I also think we take the piss out of 3-D. Everything is in 3-D these days, but only a ‘Harold & Kumar’ movie can be so self-referential as to make fun of 3-D even though it’s also in 3-D.”
As for those who worry that the “Harold and Kumar” movies glorify drug use, Penn claims the opposite is true. “A friend pointed out to me that it’s only when the guys are high that bad things happen to them,” he says. “If anything, the movies are warnings about (not abusing drugs.)”
In case you haven’t guessed already, Penn is nothing like the character who made him famous. But the actor finds much to admire about his alter ego.
“For me, the relatability of Kumar is not that he smokes weed or likes hamburgers but it’s because he has such an outgoing personality,” says Penn. “I love that about him. We’re very different in real life, and that’s the joy of playing him.
“I’m actually more of a Harold and John Cho is more of a Kumar. But usually in the third week of shooting these movies, I’ll start to come out of my shell a bit thanks to Kumar. He has a good effect on me.”
Are fans ever disappointed that Penn isn’t more of a stoner?
“Oh, yeah, they’re disappointed,” he says. “In fact, I don’t share the fact that I don’t smoke weed with too many people. I don’t want to spoil the illusion. When I’m out grabbing a drink with friends, I’ll often have people coming over to me with five beers going, ‘C’mon man, let’s pound them.’ When I say no, I can see I’m disappointing them.
“But we also have fans who don’t just like the movies for their debaucherous content. They’ll come up and say, ‘We love that you made a buddy comedy that also had a commentary on race or Guantanamo or deconstructed 3-D.’ Those fans, I guess, have a better ability to dissociate fact from fiction.”
Growing up in New Jersey, Penn was entranced by both acting and activism. His engineer father and scientist mother never let him forget that his grandparents marched with Gandhi for Indian independence.
In the eighth grade at Freehold’s Marlboro Middle School, Penn joined the drama club despite being teased mercilessly by his buddies about being an actor. After Penn aced a role in a play presented during a school-wide assembly, his friends changed their tune.
“They said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing? That was so cool!’ I thought, ‘Wow, you can actually change somebody’s mind by making them laugh.’ That was the kind of a magic that I wanted to continue doing.”
A few years ago, Penn accepted an offer to become a visiting lecturer in the Cinema Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania. Not long after that year-long stint, Penn landed a regular role on TV’s “House.” But after shooting 36 episodes, he opted to go work for the White House.
Penn will be back on the campaign trail for Obama in 2012. In the meantime, he’s helping create a workplace comedy for NBC and finishing up a re-occurring role on “How I Met Your Mother.”
“I missed being creative,” he says. “What I love about D.C. is the exact opposite of what I love about L.A. In D.C., I was able to be cerebral, but in L.A., I can be creative. And I really enjoy using that part of my brain.”