This Stand-Up Star Says He Was Runner-Up to Play Abed on ‘Community’
Having the chance to get in on the ground floor of one of the most unique and cult-beloved sitcoms of the 21st century sure would have been cool. Cool, cool, cool.
Despite the sad fact that neither he nor Community ever got their flowers from mainstream America during the show’s initial run, Chicago-born actor and director Danny Pudi’s performance as Abed Nadir, the idiosyncratic, pop-culture-obsessed, fourth-wall-breaking brainiac of the greatest study group in sitcom history, is one of those iconic acting roles that becomes inseparable from the artist who nailed it. Just as no one else could have possibly been as perfect a fit for Frasier Crane as Kelsey Grammer and only Larry David could play Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Pudi’s portrayal of Abed is what made the character such an impactful part of Community’s legacy.
Don't Miss
However, similar to how Bob Odenkirk came close to landing The Office before Steve Carell sealed the deal, Pudi wasn’t the only performer in the Community audition room who had a shot at an on-screen bromance with Childish Gambino. As stand-up star and actor Kumail Nanjiani recently revealed, he came in second place in the Abed sweepstakes, which, ironically, made him a perfect applicant for Greendale Community College admissions.
Nanjiani talked about his experience of auditioning for Community on the Lights Camera Barstool podcast, saying that he reached the final round where only a couple potential Abeds remained. “The last two for Abed were me and Danny Pudi,” Nanjiani recalled, lamenting of the near-miss. “That would have been great.”
“You audition, then I did the studio test, then the network test, which is very awkward, you go into a room like this,” Nanjiani explained, gesturing to the small Barstool podcast studio, “and there’s just like eight people in suits sitting there, you do it for them.” But the worst part of the Community casting process, Nanjiani revealed, was the aftermath. Not only did he fail to land the role, but he knew exactly what he was missing. Said Nanjiani of the network test, “Before you do that, you sign the contract already, so I’d already signed the contract, so I knew exactly how much money I didn’t make for those like six years that it was on.”
However, Nanjiani added, he has no hard feelings about missing out on Community, as even he knows that NBC made the right call when it came to casting. “Danny, amazing, super nice guy, amazing in that role, way better than I would have been,” Nanjiani praised of Pudi, though he admitted, “But that was a real heartbreaker.”
Fortunately for Nanjiani, he would eventually break through into sitcom superstardom on the hit HBO series Silicon Valley in 2014, perfectly playing the selfish and cynical coder Dinesh Chugtai for six seasons. And, in Community Season Five, Nanjiani’s friend Dan Harmon did end up getting the comic onto the show when Nanjiani debuted as the surly custodian Lapari in the episode “Analysis of Cork-Based Networking.”
Still, getting to play Abed would have been the role of a lifetime, and now, Nanjiani is stuck acting in big-budget films that actually get made instead of waiting around for Harmon to finally start production on The Community Movie.
