Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon on their The Big Sick journey

MOST people’s love stories don’t get turned into hit movies. But there’s a reason Kumail and Emily’s irresistible tale did.

IMAGINE meeting someone, dating them for a few months and then they fall sick. Like, comatose sick.

Now imagine taking that harrowing experience and turning it into a romantic comedy produced by Judd Apatow and starring yourself.

This is the experience of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon, who turned the story of how they met into the delightfully funny The Big Sick. It’s rare for screenwriters to get billing above the director on a movie poster so the fact Nanjiani and Gordon did is proof of how much they own this story.

The movie is already generating Oscar buzz and is one of the best reviewed films of the year.

In the film, Kumail meets Emily (renamed Emily Gardner in the movie and played by Zoe Kazan) at one of his stand-up gigs in Chicago. The two immediately click but he doesn’t tell her his traditional family expects him to enter into an arranged marriage.

One night, Emily ends up in the emergency room, struggling to breathe and, under pressure, Kumail ends up signing the form as her “husband” to allow the doctors to put her in a medically induced coma. He meets her parents for the first time while the doctors struggle to diagnose her condition.

It all sounds very doom and gloom at first but rest assured, Nanjiani and Gordon, and director Michael Showalter, manage to find the humour and humanity in a tough situation. You will laugh, almost endlessly and you will definitely root for this couple.

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani were in Sydney to promote their film The Big Sick. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

In real life, Nanjiani and Gordon have an infectious enthusiasm and it’s clear the spark that drew them together is still bright, even after 10 years of marriage.

Nanjiani grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and moved to the US to study computer science in college. Gordon grew up in North Carolina and worked as a family therapist before shifting to writing full time. While they may come from different worlds, their passion for pop culture and video games are aligned.

During filming, on the one day they had off each week, the couple would spend the day in their rented Brooklyn Airbnb playing video games and bingeing on Netflix.

Nanjiani, a comedian and actor best known for his role as Dinesh in HBO series Silicon Valley, and Gordon have collaborated on a number of projects previously, notably their podcast The Indoor Kids and Comedy Central series The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail.

But there’s nothing quite like writing the story of your life — a story which strangers around the world now know in intimate detail.

“[Everyone knowing everything] is definitely not something we banked on,” Gordon tells news.com.au. “But it’s been really lovely so far.”

Nanjiani says: “I hadn’t thought [that part] through. Emily said to me, ‘You know, when this movie comes out, people are going to know a lot about us’. I hadn’t thought it through to the point where people were going to watch it and know us so I feel like Emily was a little more emotionally prepared than I was. I was like ‘I’m not ready for this’”.

Gordon says this is the same dynamic of their relationship. “I’m always five steps ahead and Kumail is ‘who knows, we might die tomorrow!’”

The Big Sick is currently sitting on 98 per cent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. Supplied by Roadshow Films.

One of the things people now know about Nanjiani is he is a huge Hugh Grant fan. In the film, he admits to having the floppy Grant hair so many men sported in the 1990s — though he draws the line at Grant’s coiff in Nine Months, which Nanjiani labels “terrible”.

He proves his Grant mettle in the video above — correctly picking a stack of Grant movies from just one quote.

Nanjiani has previously credited Four Weddings and a Funeral for his decision to get into stand-up comedy, specifically, Hugh Grant’s character’s best man speech. His affection for romantic comedies in general meant The Big Sick was always destined to be one.

While Gordon says 60 per cent of The Big Sick is what really happened, Nanjiani contends it’s closer to 65 per cent.

“If you tell someone the broad strokes of what the movie is about, all that stuff is accurate,” Gordon says. “But we did a lot of playing around with situations and with people — changing their personalities — to make the movie better because, frankly, if you just watch what happens, it would be pretty upsetting.”

Nanjiani says the choice to veer away from an exact retelling meant they had to divorce themselves a little. “We weren’t precious about it,” he says. “It was about telling the best story we can, and making it the best movie we can.”

Gordon says that during the writing process they checked in with family and friends who would make it into the movie, especially if they were changing any aspect of them, so no one was shocked with the final product. Although one friend was upset her dog didn’t make it on screen.

Writing themselves and their family into a film was an insightful experience for the pair,

“I think it it’s a great therapeutic exercise in general just to have to take another person’s side — whether or not you’re fighting,” Gordon says. “We had to write scenes for each other and in each other’s voices. That I think helps you gain empathy.”

Nanjiani said the experience of writing for his parents helped him gain perspective on how they saw his life and his choices.

“It was pretty eye-opening.”

The Big Sick is in cinemas from Thursday, August 3.

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