Kumail Nanjiani, the 47-year-old star of HBO’s acclaimed comedy Silicon Valley, which ran from 2014 to 2019, lately revealed he has met many individuals from the real-world Silicon Valley, and never everybody was a fan of the present’s depiction of startup tradition. Chief amongst these folks, he mentioned, was Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and world’s richest man.
Talking on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast, Nanjiani was requested if he ever met the tech billionaires his present would lampoon, and Nanjiani mentioned sure, he had met Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, amongst others. However when Birbiglia requested if Musk appreciated the present or gave any suggestions, Nanjiani replied, “He didn’t just like the present.”
“He was like, all of the events I’m going to are a lot cooler than these events. I used to be like, yeah man, you’re one of many richest folks on this planet. We’re, like, losers on the present,” he mentioned. “After all your events are higher than my events.”
Created by Mike Decide of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill fame, HBO’s Silicon Valley ran for 53 episodes spanning six seasons. The sequence adopted Richard Hendricks, a superb however awkward programmer, who builds a startup together with his pals known as Pied Piper. Whereas its accuracy was typically debated, the present satirized Huge Tech and company tradition, and critics counseled its sharp, pointed writing that made enjoyable of “brogrammer tradition” and eccentric billionaires. Silicon Valley obtained 5 consecutive Emmy nominations for Excellent Comedy Sequence.
To Musk’s level, events in the actual Silicon Valley are in all probability “cooler” than those on the HBO present, however, like Huge Tech itself, many have reported on their tendency to push boundaries. Emily Chang’s 2018 ebook, Brotopia, described secretive gatherings that includes drug use and open sexual conduct amongst tech elites. Chang mentioned these occasions, attended by enterprise capitalists and founders, typically concerned medicine like MDMA and “cuddle puddles” that inspired intimacy, with girls reporting stigma and exclusion relying on whether or not they participated or abstained.
Chang’s ebook claimed Musk attended a minimum of one such get together in 2017, held at investor Steve Jurvetson’s home, however Musk has since vigorously disputed the characterization of the occasion as a “intercourse get together.” Musk mentioned he believed the gathering was a fancy dress get together, noticed no indicators of inappropriate conduct, and left early. He offered the next assertion to Wired in 2018: “Nerds on a sofa usually are not a ‘cuddle puddle.’ I used to be hounded all evening by DFJ-funded entrepreneurs, so went to sleep round 1am. Nothing remotely value writing about occurred,” he mentioned.
You’ll be able to stream all six seasons of Silicon Valley on HBO Max.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.