After starring in two “Harold and Kumar” movies, and working on shows such as “House,” Kal Penn wanted clarification before he started working at the White House. He asked his boss Valerie Jarrett if he landed the gig solely due to his name recognition. “I can assure you, you’re being hired in spite of it,” Jarrett quipped, as Penn recalled to NPR years later in a 2022 interview.
There was a disconnect between Penn’s life in Hollywood and becoming a White House staffer, as was evidenced when he was filling out paperwork to start the job. One question asked why he had been fired from jobs in the past. “And I wrote, ‘Fired for not being funny enough,'” Penn recalled to The New York Times in 2011. Despite the discrepancies in employment history between himself and co-workers, Penn fit in rather seamlessly. “He did a lot of grunt work and did a lot of unglamorous work and basically did the job of a consummate D.C. staffer,” Jon Lovett, a speechwriter for the Barack Obama administration told the Times. Indeed, Penn’s White House gig was a departure from Hollywood. “I don’t know anyone who would say that the White House is particularly glamorous,” he told ABC News.
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A year after leaving Tinseltown, Penn took a sabbatical from Washington to film “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas” in 2010, which he was contractually obligated to do. Not long after, however, Penn returned to acting full-time.
