Guess What All These Scripts From Kal Penn’s Early Auditions Have In Common

By Victoria McNally | TV | March 14, 2017 |

By Victoria McNally | TV | March 14, 2017 |

Go on, guess!

Found a bunch of old scripts from some of my first years trying to be an actor. pic.twitter.com/GydOwlUKGW

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

Got an idea yet?

Jeez I remember this one! They were awful. "Can you make his accent a little more AUTHENTIC?" That usually meant they wanted Apu pic.twitter.com/3F5XRORO3n

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

Are you stumped? It’s tricky, I know.

This was a pilot called The Stones. Tried to convince them to let me speak without an accent & make it funny on the merits (was told no) 😂 pic.twitter.com/SuUVYT7rip

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

Did Jimmy Kimmel write this next one?

Oh wait what about—

Ha! In this audition for Smart Guy, they didn't even give the character a name! pic.twitter.com/z2D8E5rx8J

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

Oops, nevermind.

Oh wait yes they did pic.twitter.com/xwB3qIoXoF

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

And my personal favorite:

This was for some project called The Marriage Clause I guess. pic.twitter.com/0yKjepAHqy

— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017

Of course, not all of Penn’s early experiences as an actor were Hot Garbage — in particular he highlighted his roles on Steve Harvey, 24, Buffy, and Angel as being very positive experiences. Which is so interesting to me because if I recall correctly, his Angel character was called “Fez-Head’ in the shooting script, which sounds kind of stereotypical.

It’s cool, though, the fez was hiding his psychic demon brain and he didn’t have to do an accent for it… so I guess it all works out?