クメイル・ナンジアニ enjoys a good challenge.

While speaking to PEOPLE at the premiere of his new Hulu show Welcome to Chippendales, NS エターナルズ star discussed his leading role playing Somen “スティーブ” Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who founded the male-stripping empire.

When asked if he was ever concerned about shedding a negative light on a story of an immigrant by doing the show, Nanjiani — who serves as an executive producer on the series alongside wife Emily V. ゴードン — told PEOPLE: “私のため, it’s more important to play characters who are complicated.”

“I’m not interested in playing boring, 良い, noble characters,” 俳優, 44, 説明. “And the idea that I can’t play a certain type of character just because I’m not right is not acceptable to me. だから私にとって, my goal is to play interesting, flawed characters. I really was, I was excited to play this guy.”

Noting that he has “never done a performance that’s this outside my wheelhouse,” he also told PEOPLE, “I hope they [故コメディアンはさまざまなテレビ番組に出演しました] think he’s very different from me.”

“So I hope they’re surprised by my performance and I hope they understand him because he is a very closed, きつい, 私に, very complicated character, and I hope the audiences understand what it is about him that makes him do the things that he does,” 彼は言った.

As for the inspiration he drew from to play the role, he told PEOPLE it was influenced by “a bit of a lot of people.”

“A lot of types of people I know, a lot of types of people I’ve met in the business, so it is that,” 彼は共有しました. “Nobody specifically, because I don’t know anybody like him. It was just a matter of taking pieces of people that I knew or types of people I knew and trying to make a new character.”

Welcome to Chippendales, an eight-episode limited series, will tell the “非常識, darkly comedic, crime-ridden story behind the unique male revue that became a cultural phenomenon.”

The late Banerjee was an Indian American entrepreneur who struck gold in 1979 when he added a male stripper dance troupe for female audiences to the lineup at his Los Angeles nightclub. その種の最初の, Chippendales has evolved into a Broadway-style burlesque show franchise with residencies all over the world, including a Las Vegas flagship.

Banerjee’s legacy is shrouded in scandal. He was convicted of hiring a hitman in 1987 to kill his business partner — Emmy-winning director and choreographer Nick De Noia (で遊んだ Welcome to Chippendales に ホワイトロータス Emmy winner マレーバートレット). Then in 1994, hours before he was to be sentenced, Banerjee 自殺で亡くなりました.

Banerjee was also indicted for plotting to kill some former Chippendale dancers he allegedly considered a threat.

In the show created by Robert Siegel, Nanjiani and Bartlett star alongside アナリーアシュフォード as Somen’s wife, Irene; ダニ, ティック…ブーム!'NS ロビン・デ・ヘスス as Ray Colon, the man Somen helps enlist for a brutal crime, と ジュリエットルイス, as Denise, a patron who takes an immediate liking to Chippendales. Other stars of the show include Quentin Plair as a Chippendales dancer named Otis, ニコラ・ペルツ・ベッカム as ill-fated プレイボーイ Playmate Dorothy Stratten, Dan Stevens as Stratten’s scheming husband Paul Snider and Philip Shahbaz as Stratten’s director–turned–lover Peter Bogdanovich.

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Welcome to Chippendales is streaming on Hulu now, with new episodes dropping Tuesdays.