‘Silicon Valley’ Star Reveals Why Elon Musk Hated the Show
Tesla CEO, phallic rocket obsessive and world’s worst Wario impersonator Elon Musk wasn’t a big fan of HBO’s Silicon Valley.
Kumail Nanjiani, who starred on the Mike Judge-produced series for six seasons before going on to win an Academy Award for screenwriting and becoming a literal Marvel superhero, recently outlined Musk’s objections during an episode of Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out.
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Nanjiani admitted that he met Musk while working on Silicon Valley, while stressing that they “didn’t hang out or anything” and also noting that the billionaire “didn’t like the show.” Specifically, Musk was turned off by the very first scene of the very first episode.
“The first scene of the show is — it’s such a funny opening — it’s Kid Rock playing on stage,” Nanjiani explained, “and then it cuts to the audience and it’s at, clearly, some tech party. There’s seven nerdy dudes standing there, (and) nobody’s paying attention.”
“Elon was upset. He was like, ‘Well, the parties I go to are much cooler than these parties,’” the Big Sick star recalled. “It was like, ‘Yeah man, you’re one of the richest people in the world. We’re like losers on the show. Of course your parties are better than my parties. What are you talking about?’”
According to Vox, Musk attended a special screening of Silicon Valley back in 2014, and told the press that he was annoyed that Judge had never paid hundreds of dollars to do MDMA with naked trust fund kids in the middle of the desert. “I really feel like Mike Judge has never been to Burning Man, which is Silicon Valley,” Musk stated during the event’s afterparty. “If you haven’t been, you just don’t get it. You could take the craziest L.A. party and multiply it by a thousand, and it doesn’t even get fucking close to what’s in Silicon Valley. The show didn’t have any of that.”
“The parties in Silicon Valley are amazing because people don’t care about how they’re perceived socially, which I don’t think Mike got,” Musk continued. “Hollywood is a place where people always care about what the public will think of them, and it’s fucking sad, and the show felt more like that. I’ve lived in Hollywood 12 years, and I’ve never been to a fucking good party.”
He then offered to personally take Mike Judge to Burning Man. It’s unclear if that invitation is still open.
Musk wasn’t the only tech billionaire to take issue with the Silicon Valley cast either. Nanjiani also had an awkward encounter with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, but concedes, “I don’t really blame Zuckerberg for not liking us.”
Apparently, Nanjiani and co-star Martin Starr were asked to present at a “science awards show” organized by Zuckerberg, but the duo weren’t happy with the jokes they were provided. So instead, they prepared a bit about hand jobs, inspired by the scene from the TV show in which the Pied Piper crew crack their compression algorithm thanks to dick-jerking calculations.
Unfortunately, the bit didn’t go over super-well at the ceremony, especially with Zuckerberg. “He came up and was like, ‘What the fuck was that?’” Nanjiani told Birbiglia. “And truly, in that moment, he was right.”
Who knows, maybe Nanjiani and Starr will get to play themselves in The Social Network II.
