Kumail Nanjiani says he went to counseling after negative Eternals reviews: 'Some s--- has to change'

Kumail Nanjiani is opening up about the way the surprisingly negative reviews for his 2021 Marvel film Eternals affected him.

The epic, which hails from Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, and features a massive starry cast including Nanjiani, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie, is currently one of the worst reviewed films in the Marvel cinematic universe, with a 47 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Speaking in a new episode of the podcast Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum, Nanjiani praised his cast and crew, telling Rosenbaum he felt like the project was "a slam dunk" going into it. "I had the best time doing that movie, and I realized this is how work should feel like," Nanjiani said. "However, when that movie came out and the reviews weren't good, that was very, very tough for me and I realized that too much of how I'm evaluating what I want to do is based on the result of what other people think of it."

When asked how he handled the rejection, Nanjiani said, "It was really, really hard because Marvel thought that movie was going to be really, really well reviewed, and so they lifted the embargo really early and they also put it in some fancy movie festivals and they sent us on a big global tour promoting the movie right as the embargo lifted."

"So we had to travel the world while they thought we'd be going on a wave of raves and it wasn't true. The reviews were really bad,” Nanjiani continued. He admitted to being "too aware of it" and "reading every review" to the point where it affected his personal life, and he sought counseling.

“I think there was some weird soup in the atmosphere for why that movie got slammed so much, and I think not much of it has to do with the actual quality of the movie,” he explained. “It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some s--- has to change, so I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that.”

The full conversation with Nanjiani can be viewed in the video above.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Kumail Nanjiani says he filmed a different post-credit sequence with Harry Styles for Eternals
• Eternals debate: Two EW staffers break down Chloé Zhao's entry in the MCU
• How Migration embraced Big Duck Energy and Little Miss Sunshine