Karma Calling

About a week into filming the first season of the HBO comedy Silicon Valley, series regular Kumail Nanjiani received a compliment from creator-executive producer Mike Judge about the cast's chemistry.

"You guys have really bonded," Nanjiani recalls Judge saying.

What Judge didn't realize when he chose the actors for his ensemble about tech entrepreneurs was that Nanjiani and his fellow actors (Thomas Middleditch and T.J. Miller, specifically) had been working the stand-up and pilot-season circuits together for years.

"He didn't cast us together," says Nanjiani, who plays Dinesh, a confident computer programmer. "We auditioned separately, and it was just pure luck that we all ended up on the show together."

Good fortune has been a part of Nanjiani's experience on Silicon Valley since his audition. After reading for two parts that went to other actors, Nanjiani learned that the writers were building Dinesh with the actor in mind.

"So I was like, 'I get to be on a Mike Judge show, with my friends, on HBO and I don't have to do pilot season.' And all the lines from the beginning have felt like me," says Nanjiani, who started in the business as a writer on Comedy Central's Michael and Michael Have Issues.

Nanjiani also had a recurring role on TNT's Franklin & Bash, has appeared on IFC's Portlandia and Comedy Central's Broad City and voices a character on Fox's Bob's Burgers. He's maintaining a busy stand-up career, which includes a tour and podcasts. Plus he has a packed film slate, most notably with a role in Hot Tub Time Machine 2.

"It honestly doesn't feel like work," he says, "and that's why it's easy. All of the projects are very different from one another, so that keeps it fresh for me."