Kumail Nanjiani ‘started counseling’ after brutal Marvel ‘Eternals’ reviews

He was eternally scarred.

Actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani had to seek professional help after reading all the negative reviews of his Marvel film “Eternals.”

“The reviews were bad, and I was too aware of it,” Nanjiani, 45, said on an appearance on the “Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum” podcast. “I was reading every review and checking too much.”

“It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well-reviewed,” he continued, “so they lifted the embargo early and put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour to promote the movie right as the embargo lifted.”

According to the “Big Sick” star, the press tour came right around the time that the pandemic was still relatively new and made everything seem “heightened.”

“I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie,” Nanjiani admitted. “It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife,] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some s–t has to change, so I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that.”

Nanjiani’s wife, Emily V. Gordon, thinks he still has “trauma from it.”

“We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, ‘That was tough, wasn’t it?’” recalled Nanjiani. “And he’s like ‘Yeah, that was really tough,’ and I think we all went through something similar.”

“Eternals,” which stars Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Barry Keoghan, Kit Harington and Angelina Jolie, is the worst-rated Marvel film to date, with a dismal 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Nanjiani’s less-than-sunny disposition toward the film also most likely stems from the fact that the actor developed an unhealthy relationship with food while trying to get a “superhero body.”

“It felt, for a brief moment, powerful. And then after that, it was by and large negative,” he told NPR of going from having the body of a fit comic to a jacked action movie star. “In the beginning, having that reaction from people — I’d never had that reaction before and I think part of me had always wanted it — it felt powerful.”

“And then pretty quickly after that, it felt reductive, it felt naked, it felt vulnerable. And it made it so that the discussion of my body exists in the public sphere,” he added.

Nanjiani revealed that strangers will sometimes comment about his body — something he has a “complicated relationship” with.

The “Welcome to Chippendales” lead pointed out that most of his comedic act centered around the fact that he was “taught” to be ashamed of his body ever since he was a kid.

“Growing up, I was sort of raised to believe that the body was bad, that all of the body’s desires are bad, and that the soul wants goodness and the body wants bad. And so I guess my entire sense of humor is based around that dichotomy too,” Nanjiani explained.

“I’ve always had a weird relationship with food. I’ve always had guilt or regret associated with it. I’ve always used food as a punishment or as a reward.”