Kumail Nanjiani arrived on Taskmaster ready to go, and Greg Davies said the Hollywood star got no special treatment at all on season 21. Davies said there were no airs and graces and no expectation that Nanjiani be handled any differently once he stepped into the show’s odd little world.
The timing matters because Taskmaster season 21 is now available in full on the official YouTube channel outside the United Kingdom, with Channel 4 carrying it in the UK. That has put the season back in front of viewers who want to see how one of the show’s most high-profile guests was folded into a format that usually leans on U.K.-based comics and actors rather than international names.
Davies said the appeal of the series is that it levels everyone out. He described the format as a universe of its own, with its own rules, where every contestant has to fit in. In his telling, Nanjiani did exactly that. He mucked in, joined the show in a very full-throated way and, Davies said, landed ready to go. He added that the show is at its best when people throw themselves into it.
Horne, who co-hosts the series, backed that up from the production side. He said the bungalow in Chiswick, London, is small and slightly dirty, with a tiny green room and no trailer, and that there was no Hollywood treatment waiting for Nanjiani when he arrived. Horne said he was nervous showing him around, but Nanjiani simply wanted to do the tasks. He said the actor fit in beautifully and was unabashed in his enthusiasm.
That is the point of the story. A Pakistani-American actor known for Silicon Valley, The Big Sick and Eternals walked into one of British television’s most eccentric formats and, by the hosts’ account, got the same cramped bungalow, the same rules and the same absurd workload as everyone else. What remains unknown is which specific tasks he took on in season 21, but the hosts’ message is already clear: on Taskmaster, fame did not buy a softer landing.
Taskmaster, hosted by Davies and Horne, is built around contestants competing in ridiculous, often nonsensical challenges in a three-bedroom bungalow that was once a groundskeepers’ cottage on the edge of a golf course. Season 21 is now there for viewers to judge Nanjiani’s turn for themselves, with the full run on YouTube outside the UK and on Channel 4 inside it.
