Kalpen Suresh Modi (born April 23, 1977), known professionally as Kal Penn, is an American actor, author, academic lecturer, and former White House staff member in the Barack Obama administration. As an actor, he is known for his role portraying Lawrence Kutner on the television program House, as well as White House staffer Seth Wright on Designated Survivor and Kumar Patel in the Harold & Kumar film series. He is also recognized for his performance in the film The Namesake. Penn has taught at the University of Pennsylvania in the Cinema Studies Program as a visiting lecturer.
In April 2009, Penn joined the Obama administration as the Principal Associate Editor in the White House Office of Public Engagement. This necessitated that his TV character, Lawrence Kutner, be written out of House. Penn briefly left his post in June 2010 to film the third installment of the Harold & Kumar series, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, returning to his White House job upon the movie's completion. In July 2011, he again left the White House to accept a role in the television series How I Met Your Mother.
From 2016 to 2019, he played Seth Wright in the political drama Designated Survivor, where he also served as a consultant on the show. Additionally, he served as host of the game show Superhuman. In 2019, Penn portrayed Garrett Modi in the NBC sitcom series Sunnyside. The following year he went on to host a political talk miniseries on Freeform called Kal Penn Approves This Message.
Early life and education
He was born Kalpen Suresh Modi (Gujarati: કલ્પેન સુરેશ મોદિ) in Montclair, New Jersey, to Hindu Indian Gujarati immigrant parents. His mother, Asmita Bhatt, is a fragrance evaluator for a perfume company, and his father, Suresh Modi, is an engineer. His father is from Kaira and his mother was born in Baroda. Modi regularly visited Gujarat as a child during vacations, and he can speak some Gujarati as well as some Hindi. He has stated that stories of his grandparents marching with Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement were a significant influence on his interest in politics. He is Hindu.
Modi attended Marlboro Middle School in Marlboro Township, New Jersey, where he played baritone saxophone in the jazz band. He attended The Fine and Performing Arts Academy (a magnet program) as a Theater major at Howell High School for freshman year, then transferred to Freehold Township High School for his sophomore, junior, and senior years. Both schools are part of the Freehold Regional High School District in New Jersey. He was active in the schools' theater productions and competed on the Freehold Township National Honor Society Speech and Debate team (formerly known as Forensics). He then attended UCLA, where he double majored in film and sociology, graduating with a B.A. in 2000.
