The Big Sick (2017) on Netflix
Kumail, a struggling standup comedian, meets Emily, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, after a show at a local comedy club. They start dating despite their different backgrounds.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.5/10151,638 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
Emily is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. She meets Kumail, a struggling standup comedian, after one of his sets at a local comedy club, and the two begin dating. Kumail is ethnically Pakistani and Emily is Caucasian. A few months in, Emily finds photographs of other women in his apartment and asks him about them. Kumail says they are women he has met for an arranged marriage, a cultural matter. Emily rejects that.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Big Sick (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Big Sick drew a backlash for portraying South Asian women as stereotypical and undesirable, and for casting Vella Lovell, an actress who is not of South Asian descent, as a Pakistani love interest with a strained accent.
- Co-writer Kumail Nanjiani said in 2021 that the film was the first in a long time to feature multiple Desi female characters, but that the first few seen are reduced, calling it something he completely regrets and would not do that way now.
- A real-life incident where Holly Hunter heckled an unnamed player at a US Open tennis match was not in the original script, but inspired a scene in the film in which Kumail Nanjiani's character is heckled during one of his stand-up sets.
- Anupam Kher was recruited by Kumail Nanjiani after Nanjiani's father recommended him for the part, and the role became Kher's 500th appearance in a feature film; Kher's character's last scene was the first he shot.
- David Alan Grier was cast in The Big Sick after meeting Emily V. Gordon when she was a writer on The Carmichael Show, and his role belonged to a larger subplot that was ultimately cut from the film's release.
