Nearly 20 years after her death, the sad saga of Anna Nicole Smith endures for many. She died in 2007 at the age of 39. The Texas-born, former exotic dancer’s particularly American brand of stardom seemed designed for gossip shows and magazine covers. Among the memorable events surrounding Anna Nicole were her 1993 Playboy “Playmate of the Year” title; a legal battle over her late octogenarian billionaire husband’s estate that went all the way to the Supreme Court; appearances in fashion ads and movies; and affairs with a German “prince,” celebrity photographer Larry Birkhead and attorney Howard K. Stern, her costar on E! Network’s The Anna Nicole Show.
Her 20-year old son Daniel died suddenly in 2006, a mere three days after Smith gave birth to his half-sister, Danielynn. Smith herself would die soon after, a victim of longtime substance abuse. These highs and lows of her life are being recounted in a new movie, Trust Me, I’m a Doctor, which will be released this Friday, October 16th.
The film primarily focuses on Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, a Los Angeles physician and son of Indian immigrants who started treating Anna Nicole after buying her previous doctor’s practice in 2004. As their doctor-patient connection turned into a casual acquaintanceship, Anna Nicole invited Kapoor to the 2005 West Hollywood gay pride parade as her guest. Afterward, he went clubbing with her, her beloved dogs, and her entourage. Various bystanders at the club and newscasters at the parade filmed them.
That footage leaked to TMZ in 2009, two years after she was found dead, and Kapoor was subsequently charged with eight felonies including prescribing her potentially lethal doses of methadone and Vicodin. He was eventually found not guilty. Kapoor’s 2017 memoir, Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: My Life Before, During and After Anna Nicole Smith, was a look at the court case from his point of view. He also shared personal stories including becoming a father to twin boys via a surrogate and coming out as gay to his parents while in his 40’s.
Writer-director Thane Economou (The Wedding Party) has adapted Kapoor’s memoir into an insightful, frequently funny, and often moving biopic about being burned by fame, and the way a craving for attention can be its own kind of drug.
“I saw Sandeep Kapoor as someone who stood at the intersection of entertainment, the justice system, and politics,” Economou explains in the film’s press notes. “There’s no question that Anna Nicole Smith was indicative of the late 20th century and early 21st century’s obsession with fame. Kapoor is a person who, in a tangential way, got totally pulled into that world.”
Kal Penn headlines the movie as Dr. Kapoor. Perhaps best known as Kumar in the Harold & Kumar series of stoner comedies, Penn gives an unexpectedly dramatic performance here. His casting is most appropriate given that Penn, like Kapoor, is a son of Indian immigrants. He also came out as gay in 2021.
In addition to his acting career, the multi-talented Penn worked for the Obama Administration in several capacities from 2009 to 2016 and teaches Asian-American studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
While preparing for his latest role, Penn noted that some of the ways Kapoor behaved when around Smith were not only indicative of a man charmed by a celebrity, but also of someone whose sense of self-worth seemed to inordinately hinge on approval.
“There was something very interesting about him from an acting perspective,” said Penn. “The thing that made Sandeep compelling to me were the levels of simultaneous insecurity and a self-importance that wasn’t necessarily reflected in his world. People were obsessed with Anna Nicole Smith--not with her doctor--but because Sandeep was her doctor, he got sucked into an aspect of fame that is not there in reality.”
Though the movie jumps back and forth in time as the onscreen Kapoor tells his story in a series of asides and callbacks, Penn adjusted his own copy of the script so that it was in chronological order. This gave the actor an emotional throughline to his character.
“More than anyone else, Kal knew the journey of the character,” says writer-director Economou. “He was always thinking, what is the intention behind this or that thing Kapoor says or does? Because at any given moment (in the film), Kapoor is hiding something or lying about something — even when it’s something totally unimportant. We kept asking, ‘What is Kapoor’s intention here, what’s going through his head?’ What I really respect about Kal is he had the memoir, and he had his conversations with Kapoor, but then at a certain point he said, ‘Now we honor the character as written in the script, and that’s the person I’m going to stick to.”
As Penn recalls, “If you go to Kapoor’s practice in the San Fernando Valley today, it’s in the same building as it was when he knew Anna, it’s the same practice as when Anna was his patient. He’s the only doctor there. He knows all of his patients, and they literally will text or call him with any issue. He cares about all of them, he writes down notes about them in a pad. Shadowing him was interesting to see all that; I mean, if I need to see my doctor, good luck getting an appointment for two months, and good luck getting a human on the phone! So seeing Kapoor work in a kind-of old school way, and understanding that about him, shed a lot of light on his character.”
Observing Kapoor also gave Penn additional insights for his performance. “There’s so much that Sandeep Kapoor does physically that I thought carried a lot of tension,” explains Penn. “For instance, the way he crosses his legs felt to me to be very tight from the waist down. From the waist up, as he was speaking with patients, he was very open — but from the waist down, he seemed really closed off. I thought there was an interesting tension there; something was happening behaviorally.”
Penn concluded: “It’s not every day you get to play a guy who you can meet with and who is so open and vulnerable about his insecurities. It was an interesting and welcome challenge to play him.”
Reverend's Rating: B
The Most Reverend Chris Carpenter is editor of Movie Dearest and chief contributor. He has been reviewing movies and theatre since 1996 and also contributes to Rage Monthly magazine (ragemonthly.com). He is a founding member and former Vice President of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Critics (galeca.com) and currently serves as a nominating/voting member of its New York-based Theatre Wing. Reverend Carpenter has been an ordained minister since 1995.
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