Watching Ajay Naidu in SubUrbia can be a jaw-dropping experience. As a Pakistani convenience store clerk dealing with the demands of his business, his wife, and his customers, Naidu is realer than real. His exasperation is palpable, and it is modulated perfectly to both tickle the funny bone and toy with our sympathies. The character is imbued with hints of a complex and conflicted inner life, and that alone is an achievement to be proud of—all the more so for doing this with the guy behind the local 7-Eleven counter. Naidu was nominated for an IFP Independent Spirit Award for the role. I looked for his name in the credits of that movie and have been happy to recognize that name in many subsequent films.
I didn't realize then that I had seen Naidu before. He was 11 when he went to an open call for the feature film Touch and Go and landed his first role, playing Maria Conchita Alonso's son. By the time he graduated from the Harvard-affiliated Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, he had guest-starred on New York Undercover, MacGyver, and in the Emmy-nominated after-school special No Greater Gift. I had missed out on his first series-regular role, in the critically acclaimed but short-lived comedy series Lateline as Raji, an ingratiating intern.
It wasn't until the release of another, very different workplace tale, Mike Judge's white-collar comedy Office Space, that I got to see Naidu on-screen again. It was then that his skill as a comedian exploded into the consciousness of my generation with his role as Samir Nayeenanajar, or Samir "Na-nah-gonna-work-here-anymore." His razor-sharp timing and impressive knack for physical comedy allowed him to steal many of the scenes, including, in my opinion, the sidesplitting sequence in which Samir and his buddies go berserk on a faulty fax machine. With its slow motion photography and gangsta rap soundtrack, it's a funny bit any way you slice it, but Naidu's wild, geek-funky vamping elevates it into the realm of slacker movie genius.
For me, the clincher came this year, when he popped up on a special pre-season one-off episode of the NBC drama The West Wing. In "Isaac and Ishmael" Aaron Sorkin gave his commentary on the Sept. 11 attacks and cast Naidu in the pivotal role of an Arab-American White House staffer whose name comes up during the interrogation of a terrorist. In a series of scenes showing his questioning by the White House chief of staff (John Spencer), Naidu stirringly portrayed a young man capable of separating his personal beliefs from his responsibilities as a professional and as a citizen.
Naidu can be funny, he can be heartbreaking, and he can be both at the same time. As the Chicago-born son of first-generation immigrants from India, he can play a variety of ethnicities, and he has experience in everything from Shakespearian tragedy to situation comedy. We can only hope that there will always be enough roles equal to his talent.