Kumail Nanjiani reveals he sought counseling after negative reviews of ‘Eternals’

High expectations: Speaking to host Michael Rosenbaum on his podcast “Inside of You,” uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, Nanjiani shared that Marvel initially thought that the “Eternals,” directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chloe Zhao, was “going to be like really well-reviewed.”

That idea convinced Marvel to lift the embargo early and put the cast on a global tour to promote the film, Nanjiani told the “Smallville” alumnus.

 

The reviews come in: The “Ghostbuster: Afterlife” actor noted that he was hyper-aware of the negative reviews of “Eternals” while the cast was on the tour, saying, “I was reading every review. I was checking too much because this thing had become too much in my head.”

Nanjiani pointed out that this period happened right after the COVID-19 stay-at-home order had been lifted, explaining, “So we’re coming out after this crazy thing … everything is heightened.”

“Eternals,” released on Nov. 5, 2021, received a 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it one of the worst-reviewed Marvel movies ever on the review-aggregation website.

“Unfair”: Nanjiani recalled the experience as being “really hard” and he realized at the time that “this is unfair to me. It’s unfair to Emily [Gordon, his wife]. I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some sh*t has got to change.”

Nanjiani said he had to eventually undergo counseling following the experience and that he still talks to his therapist about it. He added, “Emily says that I do have trauma from it.”

What he learned: After his experience with “The Marvels,” Nanjiani realized that he “can’t be so result based” in his work anymore “[because] I really can’t control it. I can control my experience, how I am to the people around me, what I learn from it and how I work. I can’t control what people are going to think of it.”