Eternals Star Kumail Nanjiani Teases His Secret History With Other Marvel Heroes

Marvel fans are only a couple of weeks away from finally getting to meet the characters of Eternals, who have a vast backstory. The Eternals are a race of immortal beings with superhuman powers who have secretly lived on Earth for thousands of years, but they’ve been instructed to only interfere when evil Deviants are involved, which is why they didn’t help stop Thanos. However, Kingo, the character played by Kumail Nanjiani, is a Bollywood star, and it’s been hinted that he may have had some encounters with other powered people in the past. During a recent chat with ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis, Nanjiani didn’t give away any names but teased that Kingo has definitely met some otherwordly beings. 

“Yes,”  Nanjiani replied when asked if they had developed that part of Kingo’s history. “Chloe [Zhao] had it all mapped out, and she had a very specific sense of… Because the thing is, Eternals have sort of been in hiding, right? So they haven’t been going around talking to Iron-Man and Captain America and all those people. They’ve been pretending to be normal human beings. But it makes sense that my character would have met another character who’s not from Earth either. I’m trying to be vague. I don’t know what I’m allowed to say or not. So I think that was all part of the stuff, so that even though Eternals really is a standalone movie, you want to feel the presence, and the reality of, the rest of the MCU around it. And Chloe is such a nerd with an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel and the MCU. So she was really excited about dropping these references in.”

Nanjiani got shredded for the Marvel role, and his body transformation has been a huge topic of discussion for a while now, so it’s something he’s often asked about in interviews. However, the actor recently explained to GQ that discussing his body makes him “very uncomfortable.”

“I’ve found out over the last year and a half, since I did that picture, that I am very uncomfortable talking about my body – and it’s become less and less and less comfortable,” Nanjiani explained, adding that his discomfort with the discussion has to do with the message of toxic masculinity that these conversations can evoke. “It is aggression. It is anger. A lot of times, we are taught to be useful by using physical strength or our brain in an aggressive, competitive way. Not in an empathetic way. Not in an open, collaborative way,” he explained. “It’s the same thing when you have all these guys, like, asking people to debate them on Twitter. That’s the same as arm wrestling. It’s about defeating. And that’s what the male ideal has been: Dominating. Defeating. Crushing. Killing. Destroying. That’s what being jacked is.”

In addition to Nanjiani, Eternals is set to star Richard Madden as Ikaris, Gemma Chan as Sersi, Angelina Jolie as Thena, Lia McHugh as Sprite, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Barry Keoghan as Druig, Don Lee as Gilgamesh, Kit Harington as Dane Whitman, and Salma Hayek as Ajak.

Eternals is scheduled to hit on theatres on November 5th.