Shadowing Practice: Kumail Nanjiani's Handsome Squidward Paradigm Shift - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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I don't watch Spongebob, I was too old for it,
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I don't watch Spongebob, I was too old for it,
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but there's like one character who at some point must have gotten some work done or something Who's,
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is it, Squidward?
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You're referring to handsome Squidward Handsome Squidward Handsome Squidward!
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Yes You'll see handsome Squidward,
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whenever I post anything, you'll see a couple of handsome Squidwards in the comments There!
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I got like, oh god,
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I got like, I shrank from that Cause that picture,
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I see anytime I post anything,
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that f***ing picture and then there's another one of a handsome squidward like dancing or something.
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To me, that's like the face of my oppressor is handsome squidward.
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Hey everyone, it's The Rock.
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Welcome back to another talk.
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Today we've got a dilemma unlike any I've seen before.
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Today's subject is comedian, writer,
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and actor Kumail Nanjiani, who is under pressure for a phenomenally interesting reason,
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resulting in an equally fascinating response.
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Also, we've decided you're gonna be the first person we mock for getting in shape.
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What?
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How the fuck did that happen?
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That's happened to nobody else in the history of civilization.
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Why me?
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I had almost my entire life very,
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very tough relationship with my own appearance since I was a little kid.
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When I was like five,
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I was the most gorgeous kid you've ever seen.
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To the point where people on the street would make jokes about wanting to kidnap me.
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Shopkeepers were threatened to kidnap me.
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Wow.
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That's the ultimate compliment, by the way.
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Oh, you're kidnappable.
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Literally all the time, like if I walked in the store and I didn't get a compliment,
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I'd be like, what is wrong with these people?
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Wow.
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I was so gorgeous that life was like terrifying for me.
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And then it really changed.
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My neck got really long.
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I got four Adam's apples.
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My head got huge.
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I remember when it dawned on me,
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I was like, you know,
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nobody's threatened to kidnap me in a while.
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And then looking in the mirror being like,
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oh no. From that point on,
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I just thought of myself as being very ugly.
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I wouldn't go to a store because I thought they wouldn't sell me stuff because I was too ugly.
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It was really, really very intense.
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Just thinking of how I felt about myself when I was 14 and being able to articulate it now,
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It kind of breaks my heart for that like 14 year old.
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At a certain point I was like,
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and nobody will ever have sex with me.
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Like I had times in like my teens where I was like,
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nobody's ever going to have sex with me ever.
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They used to call me chicken shoulders at school.
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I don't even think of a chicken having shoulders.
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Exactly.
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Oh, I get it.
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And so I sort of became very obsessed with how I look from the age of like 10.
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It took years and years to get past that all through my 20s and even through my 30s.
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That's kind of why comedy was so important to me,
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where it doesn't matter how you look.
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I remember I was doing a show early on.
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I was with a handsome guy and I came back and I gained some way and he made fun of me.
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And I was like, I can look like anything and work just as much as I work now.
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You need to look like that to work.
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What did happen in that episode?
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I've never even looked it up.
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Why does he look like that?
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Okay, so in order to understand Kumail Nanjiani's Handsome Squidward paradigm shift,
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we have to first understand Squidward's Handsome Squidward paradigm shift.
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So, we're going back to the source material so that we can understand what it all means.
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Well, let's just pull it up, shall we?
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Ah, yes, there we go.
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Season 5.
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Yikes.
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Alright, let's see what's up.
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Right, so through a total accident...
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No!
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By the way!
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Ah!
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SpongeBob, you broke my face!
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Squidward becomes handsome through the blunt force trauma of being hit in the face by this metal door.
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Wait, that looks an awful lot like...
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BLAY DOOOOOO!
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He becomes beautiful.
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People immediately adore him.
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Everyone adores him.
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It is insane how handsome the Squid has become just by getting hit in the face by a f***ing door.
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I mean, that's awesome.
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Squid gets what he wants,
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love and adoration, by way of accidentally becoming Beauty Tribe.
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And there's no downsides to beauty, right?
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Customers!
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Everyone will get the opportunity to touch Squidward!
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What?
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Realizing that there's some fucked up downsides to this shit,
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Squidward realizes he would rather become himself again.
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Public life ain't all it's cracked up to be!
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I want my old life back!
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They try to reverse the paradigm shift by doing the exact same thing that got him there in the first place,
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hitting him over the face with the metal door.
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And SpongeBob really gets in there.
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But it only makes him more handsome!
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SpongeBob desperately tries to save Squidward from a falling shoe,
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leading into this beautiful shot of Squidward not dancing,
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but falling, towards the pillar of the restaurant which he lands into and miraculously reverts to his old self.
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And so, I find it fascinating
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that Squidward's handsome Squidward paradigm shift leads him down a road of temporary satisfaction but ultimate yearning for his originality.
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And, fascinatingly, in contrast, Kumail Nanjiani's handsome Squidward paradigm shift would involve opposites.
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Getting really buff for a role and people getting upset about it.
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Was that, like, difficult for you?
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Or were you just like,
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I am right, they're being weird.
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No, it was a f***ing nightmare.
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To sort of get in this kind of shape and worrying about how I looked again,
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it was kind of a mindfuck to sort of,
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it felt like I'd like regressed 10 years back.
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To then hit my 40s and suddenly have that come back in such a public and strong way,
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really got at like to what to me genuinely was like deep childhood trauma.
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There was a picture of me sitting across from Emily at Christmas,
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and I have like a gingerbread house next to me and I'm just sitting there.
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For some reason, people didn't like the way my jawline looked or something.
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People think I've gotten like work done.
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I have not ever gotten any work done.
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This is like the deep COVID.
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I'm full of fear because my wife is in a high risk group.
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We get super high and we're watching The Crow.
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And a friend of mine texted me,
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he's like, hey, I'm sorry about what's happening online.
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I'm super high.
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I look, and it's literally thousands of people on Twitter making fun of my face.
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Did you see it and then put the phone away?
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No. Or did you really dive in?
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I dove in.
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I swam in it.
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And then eventually, Emily was like,
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do not be on your phone.
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And I was like, okay,
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just tell me if it's still happening.
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And the next day, I woke up.
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Yeah, it's still happening.
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All day, I kept checking in.
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It's still happening.
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It was like the number one trending thing.
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It was like a thing.
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And then the next day I woke up,
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she's like, yeah, it's still happening.
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So it was like two days and then they moved on to the next door.
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There was right around that time,
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there was a dad who was like shitty to his kid about beans or something.
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Do you remember what I'm talking about?
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Very vaguely.
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It was like Bean Dad.
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Bean Dad!
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Yeah.
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I owe a debt of gratitude to fucking Bean Dad.
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Because he moved the conversation on.
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Everyone then was like, whoa, Bean Dad now.
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And they moved off of me.
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The hordes moved off of me.
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Went after Bean Dad.
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Bean Dad was like, you know what?
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I got you, buddy.
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He jumped in front of the bullets.
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So that was very, very tough and really like working through it with my therapist a lot.
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And it's still something that kind of comes up.
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Comments on whenever I post anything,
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someone will talk about that I fucked up my face or something.
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Oh, and I watched Eternals just,
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you know, research for this video and...
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All cute, like fun, like whatever,
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like stupid, like Mardi Gras.
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The unfortunate thing is that the movie bombed.
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I mean, like, it didn't bomb,
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but it didn't make 600 million dollars, so they're canceling it.
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It could have been its own shitty Avengers and everything.
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I thought it was gonna be a hit!
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It turns out it fucking sucks!
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And now he's just handsome squitted up for a single superhero movie,
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and nothing else queued up that requires him to be in that shape.
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The hard thing is, I am jacked,
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but I don't have the vibe of a jacked guy.
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Yeah, yeah!
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The meanest comment I've ever gotten,
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because it's true, someone was like,
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Well his voice didn't get abs.
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I was like, yeah, that is true.
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I don't have the vibe.
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I have the vibe of a dork from Pakistan.
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If like the Marvel shit takes off,
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because I saw you talking about it,
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where you're like, this is my life for a decade.
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Is there a party that's like,
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that seemed like a lot.
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Like, are you kind of happy or not in the like...
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No. Are you fucking kidding me?
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Oh yeah, by now I've been like four Marvel movies.
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What a bummer.
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Oh my God.
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This guy's movies have made two billion at the box office.
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Cash money Kumail!
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Yeah, with my luck that would be the backlash to that too.
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Like, this guy's movies are making too much money.
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Fuck that guy.
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No, because you know, if you do one of those a year,
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the rest of the year you can do whatever you want.
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And suddenly, you know, I can make like, True.
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10 million dollar movies that with my name get made.
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Right.
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I was really hoping you'd be like, yes, it's a prison.
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Oh my god.
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No, that would have been great.
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Are you fucking kidding me?
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Maybe the only guy in just one?
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Just one for me, thank you.
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I will never forget that you were like,
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in a way, it's a blessing in disguise, right?
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And so fascinatingly, while Squidward became handsome,
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loved it for a little bit,
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and then hated it because the love was too much,
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Kubel got in shape, liked it,
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and eventually received so much backlash for it that he became confused by it.
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You know, it was all his intention to work on his self-esteem,
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his self-image as he's been struggling his whole life,
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Only for him to get that and be rejected.
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Oh, he got amped?
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What a moron!
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What?!
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Who changed the rules?
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Why didn't anybody give me a heads up?
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Do you know how hard this was? And so...
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What's a Squidward to do after you paradigm shifted into a handsome life?
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What's your next move?
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Well, I believe this last piece of information can be found in digging deeper into not just Kumail's life,
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but his relationship with Emily,
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the love of his life.
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Well, if you don't know the story of how they met,
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it's been beautifully captured in the couple's breakout screenplay, The Big Sick.
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What are the long-term impacts of nearly dying?
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How does it change your personality?
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I think initially I was very adamant that nothing,
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I didn't change at all.
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And that this was just a blip in my life
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and absolutely nothing had changed and that could not have been further from the truth.
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I wrote a really horrible essay.
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It was just literally like,
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I was in a coma and nothing changed.
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I'm the exact same person. Who cares? Who cares?
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I learned nothing.
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Yeah, and it and that's cool.
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If you read it you'd be like this woman is going through some shit She is in crisis
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I'm a therapist I like had a master's degree at practice for years
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and I still couldn't see that within myself
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that like oh I'm gonna it's gonna take me a while to kind of process this,
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but it it's all the most cliche stuff on earth Just gives you a real appreciation for the fact
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that all of this is temporary and how fleeting everything is
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and there's very little that scares me now There's very little
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that could happen to me or you could say to me being rejected for a job,
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if this movie hadn't done well,
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any of that stuff doesn't compare to waking up and realizing,
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oh, I could have died and I didn't even know it and that could have all gone away.
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So I think I'm definitely less cynical than I used to be.
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In his own words, Kumail tells us
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that really the only two things he cares about are his relationship with Emily and his work.
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I feel like my life is really two things.
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It's my life with Emily and that really is,
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you know, I had this epiphany.
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I was like, that is my reason for being on this earth.
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Like, getting to know Emily.
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Yeah, that's like one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
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Otherwise, it's pointless.
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It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
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Keep going.
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That's not to say that we don't have to work at it.
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We really, really do and it is work.
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There's joy in the work,
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but there is intentional work that we have to do every day.
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But I realized that what I have with her is a very special thing.
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That is my purpose for being.
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The other thing is work.
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He does it all for love.
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That's what it's all for everybody.
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Spoiler alert, cheat code, gotta be the highest value there is.
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She's the coolest, best person I've ever met.
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I really believe that.
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What I love most about her is that the parts of her that she shows me that she doesn't show anybody else.
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No one would say Emily's closed off, right?
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She's very emotionally open.
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However, there is some curation to it.
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There is some stuff that other people don't get to see of Emily
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and I'm the only person in the world that gets to see it.
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I find that to be really magical.
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She's such a brilliant writer,
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and I love that I'm the first person in the world that gets to read her writings.
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So I'll read something she wrote,
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and I'm like, Emily is so cool.
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Where's my Emily?
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But the big sick was successful and it was cute as hell and you know,
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it makes you want to fall in love and shit fall in love and shit.
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And to finally bring in that peace to complete the trifecta that's been fought for in a lifelong struggle,
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love of the self.
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As someone who's struggled to love themselves their entire life,
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it feels painfully contradictory that it's so easy to love others and so improbable to love ourselves.
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You don't even realize the tone with which you're talking to yourself.
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You know, I didn't even realize it was negative until,
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you know, therapy, they were like,
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so how do you say this?
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You know, you're on set.
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You didn't do a good job.
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What do you say to yourself?
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And I'm like, Oh, heinous shit.
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Oh, yeah.
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You don't even realize.
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It's that fucking Leonardo DiCaprio scene in, um...
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Once Upon a Time...
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Once Upon a Time.. when he's in the trailer.
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He's like, you fucking no good!
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What the fuck was that?
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Jesus Christ!
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Embarrass yourself like that in front of all those goddamn people!
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You're fucking lying!
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I practiced them and now it don't look like I goddamn practiced them!
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You're sitting there like a fucking baboon!
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Blah-blah-blah-blahdj-dj-dj-dj-dj-dj!
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It's that.
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It's that.
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It's that.
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It's just my default has always been that.
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Like, since I can remember.
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The thing is, real love is not merely immediate adoration.
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It's not high esteem only at the moments of victory.
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Real love is truly and deeply wanting the best for someone.
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To feel joy when they progress and overcome.
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To feel hurt when they hurt.
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That's connection.
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Real love is seeing someone at their worst and still recognizing their inherent value.
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I'm praying when you see me at my worst,
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you see worse than me.
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And so, to love ourselves is not so dissimilar to loving our loved ones.
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Albeit feeling paradoxical at times,
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it's wanting the best in progress and overcoming for that person that we are.
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Let me try.
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I love Rock, so I want the best for Rock.
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I love rock, so I want rock to succeed on rock's main quest.
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Now you try.
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And now I do actually like myself.
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It's a recent thing, last few years.
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And then now I think I have a good relationship with it.
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When I work out, I feel in the moment,
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because you're lifting heavy weight,
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and you kind of need to be there and focus on that.
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You have to be outside yourself.
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You have to make sure you're using it properly,
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otherwise you're going to get hurt.
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So I get really a lot out of it.
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My anxiety has been a lot lower.
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I sleep a lot better since I've been like working out a bunch.
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So now I'm aware of how things make me feel.
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That's the biggest thing.
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I wasn't aware of any of these things.
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And so, what's a Kumail to do?
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Well, if Squiddy's answer was to return to how things were,
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Kumail taking the other path says, Never go back.
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And now I know all of you are waiting for me to go back to how I was.
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I want to make you so happy if I go back to how I was.
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So now I'm stuck in this prison,
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because I don't want to give you the satisfaction.
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There's no reason for me to be buff anymore but I am because fuck you.
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I'll be doing push-ups on my deathbed because fuck you.
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When I look at cake and want to eat it,
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I think of how happy it'll make you if I eat it.
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That gives me the strength to not eat it.
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Fame's a whole paradigm shifting thing.
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Context & Background
In this enlightening video featuring comedian Kumail Nanjiani, a deep exploration into self-image and societal standards of beauty unfolds. Nanjiani candidly shares his personal journey, reflecting on the drastic shift in how he perceived himself from childhood to adolescence. This dialogue highlights the emotional impacts of self-identity and societal pressure, making it a profound reference point for anyone interested in understanding the complexities surrounding appearance and self-esteem. By engaging with this content, learners can not only practice their English but also gain insights into cultural narratives that shape individual experiences.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “How did that happen?” – A great expression for genuine surprise and inquiry.
- “Nobody's threatened to kidnap me in a while.” – A humorous way to discuss changes in life circumstances.
- “What is wrong with these people?” – An effective phrase to express confusion or disappointment.
- “I just thought of myself as being very ugly.” – A raw expression reflecting personal struggles with self-perception.
- “It kind of breaks my heart.” – A poignant phrase for conveying emotional sensitivity.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
Shadowing is an effective technique for language learners to enhance their English speaking practice and improve English pronunciation. Follow these steps using Kumail Nanjiani's video:
- Watch the video without sound: Familiarize yourself with the context and visual cues.
- Listen attentively: Play the video with sound, focusing on Nanjiani’s pronunciation and intonation.
- Pause frequently: Stop the video after each sentence and repeat it aloud. Use the phrases listed above for practice.
- Record yourself: Capture your voice while mimicking Nanjiani's delivery to identify areas for improvement.
- Engage with the content: Reflect on the meanings behind the words, allowing for a deeper connection to the language while discussing themes like self-image and acceptance, which will aid in IELTS speaking practice.
By utilizing this shadowspeak method, learners can make significant strides in their spoken English, while also understanding the intricacies of human experiences—allowing for rich vocabulary and emotional expression in conversation.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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