The internet got caught in a thirst trap earlier this week when actor Kumail Nanjiani shared a couple of shirtless pics, showcasing the jacked physique that he attained for his role in Marvel’s Eternals. It was a hugely surprising look for the actor who is best known for his comedic chops and not his rippling abs. Speaking about Kumail Nanjiani’s amazing body transformation, his Eternals trainer Grant Roberts commended the actor for drinking the Kool-Aid, saying:
I’m so impressed by him. I can only do so much. He’s the one who has to push through, and it’s definitely painful and there are sacrifices. Kumail drank the Kool-Aid and was all in. I'm very proud of him.
While everyone who saw Kumail Nanjiani’s shirtless pics was impressed, it sounds like the person most blown away by the actor is the man who saw that transformation take place first hand, from beginning to end: his personal trainer. Grant Roberts of Granite Gym has worked with the likes of Scott Eastwood, Eva Longoria, Zachary Levi and Hillary Swank, and it sounds like he is especially proud of Kumail Nanjiani’s transformation.
As Grant Roberts told The Hollywood Reporter, Kumail Nanjinani “drank the Kool-Aid and was all in” to achieve the highly impressive result. The celebrity trainer notes that he can only do so much as Nanjiani's trainer, and he’s absolutely right. He can program Kumail’s workouts and coach him all he wants, but at the end of the day, the actor is the one that has to lift the weights and step on that treadmill time and time again.
That’s no easy thing and there are sacrifices and struggles involved, but fortunately, Grant Roberts had a willing partner with Kumail Nanjiani. The actor, who just finished up his run on HBO’s Silicon Valley, and almost seemed out of character as a ripped Dinesh, drank the Kool-Aid and was all in on the process. Kumail Nanjiani was really committed to the transformation and getting the job done. It sounds like he really embraced it and maybe even got hooked.
Perhaps making the transformation even more impressive was Kumail Nanjiani’s relative inexperience with this kind of exercise. And the Eternals actor was only partially prepared for what he was in for, as Grant Roberts continued, saying:
Kumail walked through my doors in January, and he was pretty green to the idea of training. He had a concept in his mind, but we introduced him to something more dramatic and even traumatic. There’s no one dimension to success. You’re constantly shocking the system, and that’s how growth and change occurs. The time in the gym is very intense, even if you’re training an hour or an hour and 15 minutes per day. The rest of the time outside the gym is just as important.
In his Instagram post, Kumail Nanjiani made it plain that his transformation was not easy. He obviously had some idea what he was getting himself into, but Grant Roberts gave him a bit of a rude awakening by constantly changing things up with his training to promote growth.
The actor was in the gym on average four to five days a week, sometimes working out twice in one day. By the sound of it these weren’t light workouts either. Kumail Nanjiani was put through the ringer every time, with intense, purpose-driven workouts. You can’t just watch the Maximizing Alphaness video to achieve a physique like Kumail Nanjiani’s, you’ve got to put in the work and the time.
And that’s just during workout time. Maintaining that transformation required discipline outside of the gym, which is probably more difficult than the workouts themselves.
For Kumail Nanjiani, the proof is in the pudding and now that he has a superheroic physique, we’ll get to see him actually play one as Kingo in the Phase 4 MCU film Eternals.
Eternals opens in theaters on November 6, 2020. Check out our 2020 Release Schedule to see when all of next year’s biggest movies will arrive.
