After famously playing a doctor on House M.D., the one-and-only Kal Penn is putting his white coat back on for an all-new kind of role in the dramedy Trust Me, I'm A Doctor, where he stars in the lead role as Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, who was the former doctor of Anna Nicole Smith.
We recently sat down with Penn to talk about his role in the new film and what initially attracted him to the part. He also gets into how he found Kapoor's family home life extremely relatable as an Indian-American, what it was like to work with the iconic Linda Hamilton, and how he's able to blend comedy and drama so effectively.
The film follows "Dr. Sandeep Kapoor after his life is turned upside down when he is implicated in the death of his former patient, model and reality television star Anna Nicole Smith. Set against the height of the early 2000s tabloid era, the film chronicles Kapoor’s fight to clear his name as paparazzi descend on his office, police raid his home, private journals are leaked, and every aspect of his personal life becomes public. With the guidance of respected attorney Ellyn Garofalo, Kapoor must navigate a high-stakes drug conspiracy trial while confronting the intersection of celebrity, justice, politics and personal redemption."
The cast features Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle; House M.D.) as Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, Linda Hamilton (Terminator 2: Judgment Day; Chuck) as Ellyn Garofalo, David Julian Hirsh (Weeds; CSI: NY) as Howard K. Stern, and Abbie Cornish (Bright Star; Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) as Anna Nicole Smith.
Thane Economou (The Wedding Party; First Date from Hell) directed the feature with a screenplay he wrote based on the book by Dr. Sandeep Kapoor.
Trust Me, I'm A Doctor is now playing in theaters!
Watch our full interview below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: Dr. Sandeep Kapoor is a very complicated person, and he obviously blurs the line between the doctor-patient relationship. What immediately hooked you to his journey and what he went through to redeem himself?
KAL: I think the first thing was I read the script and I—or I even—even before I read it, I saw the email, right? And I just sort of thought, "Oh, I wonder what the story is here." I thought this guy's in jail, because I didn't really follow the Anna Nicole Smith story, but you just think like, "Oh, I remember hearing about this, I remember hearing these guys got convicted or something." And then you read the logline, I'm like, "Oh, he was acquitted. Oh, I didn't know that." And then I start reading the story, and really the thing that appealed to me was less about the case itself and more about the vulnerability of who the real Sandeep is, or at least the Sandeep in the film, right? He's a guy who was incredibly flawed, made tons of mistakes as he tells it in the service of proving his innocence. And I thought that's psychologically very, very interesting, so that's what kind of drew me to it initially.
ROHAN: Back in '08, when you were working for President Obama, I got a chance to meet you at NC State when you came to speak. My mom came up to you, and she was immediately like, "I want him to be as successful as you," and you were very nice to her, so I always remembered that. In this film, Sandeep's parents are also this huge backbone, and as Gujarati Americans ourselves, how did that authentic parental dynamic and support resonate with you when building Sandeep's resilience?
KAL: It's a great question, and thank you for asking that, and also that's very sweet, that '08 connection. I think, you know, in the story, in the film, Sandeep's parents are a small thread throughout, namely his dad, and his dad showing up in the trial every single day. In reality, I got to meet Sandeep's parents, actually before I met the real Sandeep, because it was important to me to get that relationship right. And they're still very close, you know, they were living together at the time that a lot of this was going on. They were living together when he first had his two kids. They still live close by to each other in LA.
It was that closeness that I kind of thought, I wonder how you get through a trial like this without the support of the parents, and he didn't, thankfully, have to worry about that. But then also, you know, I think we all don't share everything with our parents. And in Sandeep's case, there's a monologue in the film where he talks about all the times that he felt like he was lying to the world and to his parents. And, you know, there are little parts of it about lying about his job or lying about being gay. But the real arc of that for me was him not feeling... like all of those little things ended up being a big burden for him.
In reality, apparently, Sandeep was very close with his mom, and his mom knew almost everything about him, but his dad didn't. So the script took certain creative liberties that kind of put them both in the same bucket. But in reality, he was, I guess, closer with his mom at the time than his dad. So the film itself kind of merges those two.
ROHAN: You share a lot of scenes with Linda Hamilton in this film. You've worked with a lot of great actors, but Linda Hamilton is Sarah Connor, so what was that dynamic like, and what was it like building that rapport with her?
KAL: She's great. I obviously was a massive fan of hers before I had the chance to work with her on this, and that was definitely one of the highlights. You know, she's playing my lawyer. I'm not telling her the whole truth in all these scenes. Some of the scenes were kind of going at each other's throats, which was very, very cool. And she's also what a dynamic, very sweet, very giving actor. She's great, I think the world of her.
ROHAN: Considering the way the story plays out, you have to be the straight man in a lot of ways while all of this crazy stuff is happening to you. You have a ton of experience in comedy, but this is a serious drama at the end of the day. What was it like finding the right balance to play this character the way you did?
KAL: Yeah, I think the balance to me was a couple of things. One is he is self-deprecating, right? So many of the things that are funny in a dark comedy like this is, A, we never want to make light of the fact that this is really based in the tragic death of this model and reality TV star. At the same time, the real Sandeep is really dynamic.
So some of the things that grounded me in that is, you open by saying there's this blurred line between doctors and patients in the way that the character of Sandeep handles those relationships. When I shadowed the real Sandeep in his real office, I was floored by a couple of things. Number one, humans pick up the phone in his office. I don't know about you, but like if I'm trying to make an appointment with my doctor, I got to go online or talk to some AI slot bot to try to get an appointment. And, "Oh, the first available is in four weeks." What?
But you call Sandeep's office, and a human picks up the phone. He knows all of his patients. He has a smaller patient list. It would not be uncommon—it reminded me of the things you read about what doctors must have been like in the 1950s.
And so because of that, I think it wasn't uncommon for him to get invited to a patient's kid's bar mitzvah or a sweet sixteen or a birthday party. And so knowing that backstory, it was like, okay, so because of that, it wasn't out of the question that even a famous patient like Anna Nicole Smith would have invited Sandeep to a social activity. I think clearly the decisions he made after that in the case of Anna raised a lot of red flags, as they should have, and I think Sandeep would be the first one to tell you that. But those were the things, I think, when I was trying to ground who he was. It was also understanding the lack of experience I had with people like this, right? Like a 1950s doctor operating today, still, in LA? It's kind of unheard of.
TRUST ME, I’M A DOCTOR follows Dr. Sandeep Kapoor after his life is turned upside down when he is implicated in the death of his former patient, model and reality television star Anna Nicole Smith. Set against the height of the early 2000s tabloid era, the film chronicles Kapoor’s fight to clear his name as paparazzi descend on his office, police raid his home, private journals are leaked, and every aspect of his personal life becomes public. With the guidance of respected attorney Ellyn Garofalo, Kapoor must navigate a high-stakes drug conspiracy trial while confronting the intersection of celebrity, justice, politics and personal redemption.