A Conversation With Emily V. Gordon About The Big Sick's Brutally Real Love Story
Entertainment
The explosive Breakup Scene that drives all romantic comedies, the one so expected that it’s no longer a spoiler, happens in The Big Sick. But the stakes are graver than in your average rom-com. In this case, the leading man Kumail (played by Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani) is a Pakistani-American comedian who’s stuck between his parents’ desire for an arranged marriage and his desire to find love on his own. Problems arise when Kumail hides the truth from his girlfriend Emily (Zoe Kazan)—a character fashioned after Nanjiani’s actual wife and writing partner Emily V. Gordon—and Emily is too dazed by his dishonesty to understand his cultural struggles. Their conflict gets complicated when she falls ill and has to be placed in a medically-induced coma, all of which is based on the true love story of Nanjiani and Gordon.
During the press run for the Judd Apatow-produced film, in theaters this Friday, Nanjiani has insisted that it’s not intended as a “political statement” —“It is interesting that the movie is being seen in a different context than it was intended,” he told Variety. “Obviously it would be great if our movie came out and people didn’t see it as a political statement because it really isn’t. It is just a love story and a comedy.” Yet, the content and timing of its release makes it more than a simple love story. The Big Sick is a facsimile of real life in many ways, a film that for better or worse allows itself to be messy and its characters partially unlikable. The humor comes off quick and sharp (sometimes abrasively playing off stereotypes), largely thanks to Nanjiani’s subtlety; his character’s family, as well, fuels the best scenes.
But a movie about the politics of desire is destined to be as muddled and confusing as in real life (as in, maybe you’ll be frustrated and internally screaming at certain scenes). After watching a screening in early June, I left satisfied that a rom-com exists that’s not just about white people in love (well, it half is) and also left with questions. I got to ask some of those to Gordon at a junket in New York, where we spoke one-on-one about her writing process with Nanjiani and The Big Sick’s big picture.
JEZEBEL: I want to dive right into the central conflict of the movie, which is the cultural difference between this Pakistani American man and a white woman… I know it’s weird to be talking about your life story. How do you go about putting those difficult conversations in writing in a way that comes across honest?
EMILY V. GORDON: It definitely was a challenge. What was good is that none of the conversations that were had in the movie between Kumail and I, or between my parents, none of them had an element of hatred in them. They were all coming from a place of confusion more so than anger. The most angry conversation in the movie is the breakup between Kumail and Emily. That was definitely difficult. We both wrote versions of it, and then we shared our versions with each other, which is not how we did the rest of the scenes. Kumail and I had arguments similar to that [in real life] but never broke up. When you’re reliving arguments, you want to paint yourself as the good guy, but in that fight, they’re both kind of right and they’re both wrong. We didn’t want any of them to be the one who’s more correct or the one who’s like, you’re supposed to be on their side. I’ve talked to people and they’re like, “Emily’s such a bitch.” Or they’re like, “Kumail is an asshole in that scene.” And that’s how you’re supposed to see it. That took us both writing versions and having outside people that could help us mediate—that’s not the right word, but we wanted to make sure we had both sides.
I’m glad you mentioned the jerkish aspects of the lead characters, because I wanted to ask if they’re supposed to be unlikable in some way. There’s that element of, Okay, why is Emily so upset right now?
Yeah, we wanted it to be messy. Again, the whole idea of there’s no bad guys and there’s no good guy. They’re both messy people who sometimes overreact and sometimes do low-blows in arguments. ’Cause that is how we all are. There are people I love dearly that are awful to argue with because people contain multitudes. We wanted to make sure that was part of it, too.
I thought the big argument scene was effective in showing the tension in a relationship where privilege or ignorance kind of blinds people from seeing the other side. She doesn’t understand his culture of arranged marriage and he pushes back against her blind spot. He feels like he’s dealing with bigger issues. I feel like it’s one of the moments in the movie where the ignorance is played for drama instead of humor.
Yeah, I had to do a lot of work with myself to realize just how stupid I was early in our relationship and how I was coming at it from this blind spot of, like, Just tell your parents how you feel. We used to have several scenes that were leading up to that argument. We boiled it down to that one fight. I was so dumb about it. I really was. Because I come from a family where you’re supposed to rebel and that’s part of growing up and [I’m thinking], they’ll understand, they love you. Not even getting the tip of the iceberg of how complicated it was. I think it was a little difficult to “write myself.” There are still parts of me when I watch it and I’m like, no, no, but I understood later! But that’s where I was—not enough to break up with him about it, but that’s a shade of where I was. And where we wanted the character of Emily to be is kind of not understanding. Even now, after ten years, I have the tip of the iceberg. My job is to listen and understand the iceberg and that takes work. We wanted to show, if you want that to be an end result, you have to back it up. But it’s not always fun to watch.
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