Everyone loves Kumail Nanjiani for playing Dinesh Chugtai in Silicon Valley or writing and starring in the recent movie hit The Big Sick, but his talents also extend to gaming and orc-ing. He's the latest celebrity to join TV host Conan O'Brien for his Clueless Gamer segment, where the guys played Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War.
Nanjiani actually leant his voice to one of the orcs in the game, and tells O'Brien he's pretty nervous about it, before we see his orc - Dugz The Agonizer - in action. "You in no way changed your voice," yelps O'Brien. "Did you do that over the phone? What the hell was that?" Then Michael de Plater, creative director on the game, arrives and defends the performance.
"He sounds exactly like an orc," de Plater tells O'Brien, as Dugz The Agonizer chats away in the background about the difference between a pike and a spear. With a smile, Nanjiani turns to de Plater and says "bro, you f**ked me."
It isn't Nanjiani's first role in a game. If you spent anytime in Mass Effect: Andromeda you'll have heard him as Salarian Jarun Tann. He's also talked about games in his stand-up and hosted gaming podcast The Indoor Kids with Ali Baker and Emily V. Gordon.
"A lot of people say video games can be stifling. Older people say, 'We had to go outside, and we had to make up stories,'" he told Mental Floss in 2015. "For me, video games broadened my horizons. Playing Golden Axe, I was those characters. I imagined myself being in that world, so honestly, it was a really good thing. I would start writing stories set in those worlds. They never went anywhere, but that was the first time I wanted to write about that kind of stuff."
Middle-earth: Shadow of War is released on October 10, Nanjiani's movie The Big Sick is available on demand now.
