Kal Penn Talks Roles Good, Bad and Hard
By Romen Basu Borsellino | 21 Jan, 2026

In Part 1 of an exclusive Goldsea interview the Harold and Kumar star discusses his most challenging roles and one he'd give a hard pass to.

Kal Penn is the host of Here We Go Again on iHeartPodcasts

Romen Borsellino (00:00)

Yo, we are here with Kal Penn on the GoldSea Podcast. Kal you are an actor, a former White House aide, professor. Now you've got "podcast host" in the mix with your new show Here We Go Again. I'm excited to ask about that, but you and I are also friends. So I am especially excited to talk to you. We met on the Obama campaign in 2007, when I was 17 years old.

Kal Penn (00:22)

That's crazy. Yes.

Romen Borsellino (00:28)

I understand that you met Zohran Mamdani when he was 14 years old, so I am a little jealous that, you know, that your friendship with him predated mine.

Kal Penn (00:38)

Although in fairness, you met him before——

Romen Borsellino (00:40)

Yeah, I've known him for a while, but I just, feel like the stakes have been raised such that I need to do something bigger than him than like, you know, run for mayor of New York, just like to, you know, to compete a little bit.

Kal Penn

Sure. Are you going to run for office?

Romen Borsellino

No, absolutely not. Are you? Are you gonna run for office?

Kal Penn (00:52)

Absolutely not. No. No, no desire.

Romen Borsellino (01:01)

Of course, why would you? You have a great acting career. A lot of people know you from Harold and Kumar and the Namesake. Is there a specific role that you are dying to play? Either a specific like person or a type of like, "I'd like to play this character."

Kal Penn (01:14)

Man. Yeah, so there's two ways I think about this. One is that, you know, I like playing people that are as different from me as possible. So anytime somebody is like, just…what's the right word? Like, for example, one of the roles I found the most challenging, this is back in the day now, but I had like a four episode arc on 24. And I was a bad guy, had to hold a family hostage with a gun for like, you know, basically for four weeks, that's what I would do. And two things that I think we can all agree we don't necessarily love are like guns and terrorists.

So playing both of those things was like, it was a stretch. Loved it. So on the one hand, it's like, okay, what's the biggest departure from who I am in real life? That's the kind of thing I want to play. But then on the flip side, and you know this about me, I'm a huge astronomy nerd. So I've kind of always wanted to play an astronaut who like, but who actually gets to go to space. Yeah.

Romen Borsellino (02:18)

Shit, that would be awesome. I would love to see you play an astronaut.

Kal Penn (02:24)

I would love to do that.

Romen Borsellino

Would you ever do like the Marvel route? Play like some comic book stuff?

Kal Penn

What I love about this question is it's something that like an uncle would ask. I'm like, yes, Romen, if Marvel called and was like, would you like to be in a Marvel movie? I don't know any actor who would be like, no, I think I'm gonna go do an experimental theater piece for 50 people.

Romen Borsellino (02:49)

It's a matter of if you want to, okay? But I also understand that you would not want to be on record saying that you wouldn't want to do it because then one day when Marvel is deciding whether or not

Kal Penn

When Marvel calls.

Romen Borsellino

To cast you, they come back and watch this podcast and you're like, "yeah, I would do it only for money, but I don't care."

Kal Penn (02:52)

I see what you're saying.

Kal Penn

No, I 100%. I mean, one of the, got cut out of most of it, but I had a part in Superman Returns back in the day. And the character I played, this guy named Stanford, had like a 20 minute subplot that ended up on the cutting room floor. But I had a great time working on that. That was obviously huge superhero movie. So yes, I would do a Marvel movie.

Romen Borsellino (03:29)

I remember that, that was a Bryan Singer film starring you and Kevin Spacey. Did you and Kevin get to really bond during that process?

Kal Penn (03:37)

You know, I was friends with Brandon Routh who plays Superman from before either of us were cast in the film, because we both kind of came up together. He's an Iowa guy like you.

Romen Borsellino (03:47)

I know. My mom is like friends with his uncle because everyone in Iowa is friends with everyone else.

Kal Penn

So, cool. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So so it was very cool since we were friends way before he gets cast as Superman. And then it was another like, I think, two months later, it just so happened that I get cast as one of the bad guys. So we were roommates together in Sydney where the film was shot. I mean, he was there for like two years working on that. I was only in there for like three months.

Romen Borsellino (04:15)

Are there any roles that's like the one that got away? Something you were offered that you passed on and you kick yourself? Like famously, think Dave Chappelle was offered the role of Bubba in Forrest Gump

Kal Penn (04:28)

No way.

Romen Borsellino

And is constantly like, "I should have done that. That was the stupidest pass on my part."

Kal Penn

I don't think so. Well, I don't think so. And part of that is because when you pass on something, you kind of just put it to bed in your mind. But there, this is, I don't know what these were, but so when I, like I'm an actor, obviously, I took this two year sabbatical to work in politics and the week that I did that, it became a news story, which I very naively, like a lot of other things in my life, I didn't think was gonna be of interest to anybody.

So I was caught off guard when it became this like massive news story. "Kal Penn is taking a sabbatical from acting to go work in the Obama White House." And because it became a news story, my agent at the time apparently got like 50 phone calls with straight offers for big movies that were like, well, if Kal can just defer nine months, we'd love to offer him this huge part in this massive blockbuster that we're doing. And I told him to never tell me what those were because I couldn't do it. Like I couldn't say,

All of which, by the way, in retrospect, yes, you could have. You could have waited nine months to go work in government. You should have done that movie, whatever those movies were, like do as many of those things as you can and then go serve your country. So it's not to say I have regrets, I obviously don't, but whatever the ones that were that got away, I don't know their names.

Romen Borsellino (06:01)

Good, well, I kinda wanna reach out to your agent and get those names and then whenever you and I are like in a fight, I can kind of lord that over you. Like, "well, funny you say that because you could have played the lead in Everything Everywhere All At Once but no, nevermind, just not something you're interested in"

I saw an AI video recently that depicts a bunch of Simpsons characters played by actors and you were depicted as Apu, but in like the most tasteful way possible/

Kal Penn (06:33)

I saw this. I saw this.

Romen Borsellino

You had like a very lovely yellow sweater buttoned down on. Would you accept the role of Apu if offered?

Kal Penn

Wow, interesting. mean, Apu's always been played by white people.

Romen Borsellino (06:55)

Yeah, I mean, just one white guy specifically.

Kal Penn

I would, right. So I would hope they would stay true to the character and make sure that it's a white dude in brown face the way that the creators intended.

Romen Borsellino

They, okay, so you don't see this as the same as Marvel. I was expecting the same Marvel answer of like, a Simpsons movie would have some serious financial impact

Kal Penn (07:17)

You know what I think would be cool? I would love to be in a Simpsons live action movie, obviously, but I feel like the cooler role there is not one of the old school characters. I feel like it would be like no shade to Apu who is obviously funny, as are all the characters that you grew up with. I'd love to be in that world in something that's far less iconic, if that makes sense.

Romen Borsellino (07:46)

I mean, it kind of does. Who would want to see a new Simpsons character though, right? When you go see the Rolling Stones, are you like, I hope they play brand new songs that no one's ever heard before. That's something the audience will really connect with.

Kal Penn (07:59)

Can we just state the obvious? We know each other well enough that you knew the answer that I have is obviously I do not want to play Apu in a live action version of the Simpsons, Romen. You know the answer to that.

Romen Borsellino (08:11)

Yeah, but our listeners, Kal, don't necessarily…

Kal Penn

I know, that's why I was trying to come up with a fun version of why.

Romen Borsellino

There's something called journalistic integrity here where, you know, I have to play it straight. But I know you would obviously not want to play that. You've already played a character named Taj Mahal Badalandabad. Great character.

Kal Penn

Thank you.

Romen Borsellino

I grew up being compared to that character, which is funny because I had… There was no comparison. It was just like, "brown guy, brown guy."

Kal Penn

Yeah, yeah, Well, you're welcome.

Romen Borsellino (08:42)

Yeah, no, thank you very much.