He shared that he broke a tooth while filming an eating scene and had to get six procedures to get it fixed. Ouch!
Before getting into the story, Kumail revealed that he once went 15 YEARS (!!!) without going to the dentist. “I did not go. And then one day, I was just walking on the street and I walked by a dentist’s office, and I was like, Oh, you know what I haven’t done in a while? I should just walk in and see what’s going on in there,” he explained.
“So I just walk in and I’m like, ‘It’s just a regular dental checkup.’ And she looks in my mouth and she goes, ‘Clear my calendar.'” LOL.
“I knew it was going to be bad ’cause she was like, ‘Do you have any symptoms?’ and I said, ‘If I eat ice cream on the left side of my mouth, my spine hurts. And I see the spinning house from Wizard of Oz. … The entire soundtrack of Kill Bill plays really fast in my head,'” he joked.
He shared that he had two teeth that pained him every day for years until they suddenly stopped hurting. “Which is sort of like when the check-engine light in your car, after months of it being on, when it just goes off, you know? Where it’s like, ‘You know what? Don’t worry about it anymore.'” When Jimmy asked if the nerve endings had died, Kumail responded, “Yeah, I won. I powered through it.”
Kumail revealed that his parents didn’t take him to the dentist when he was growing up. “My mom is a little bit of an anti-dentite … I called her to tell her I went to the dentist and he said shit’s fucked up in there. And she was like, ‘Why did you go to the dentist?’ I’m like, ‘That’s not the right response to that.'”
Having shared the backstory, the actor resumed his recollection of visiting the dentist after he broke his tooth during filming. “He was fixing my stuff up, and then he looked at me and he was like, ‘Do you like your smile?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Huh.'”
Kumail continued, “And then on the wall as I’m sitting there, there’s a huge picture of this gorgeous woman with a perfect smile. … And he was like, ‘Huh. ‘Cause that is a good smile.'” Then the dentist told him that same woman from the picture would be the person cleaning his teeth!
“And then he leaves, and 30 seconds later, that woman walks in! It was like meeting a celebrity! And it’s like a huge picture of her, and then she comes right in front with the same smile. And I’m looking at a massive version of her head as the normal version of her head is inside my mouth. It’s very Hollywood,” he concluded.
