Kal Penn is, in fact, being serious

Well, everyone close to him, apparently.

But the actor, who did a two year stint in the Obama White House, decided to tell the entire world on Sunday in advance of his new memoir out today, You Can’t Be Serious. He and his partner, known to the public only by his first name, Josh, are also engaged. This was no secret, however. “I’ve always been very public with everybody I’ve personally interacted with. Whether it’s somebody that I meet at a bar, if Josh and I are out or we’re talking to friends,” he told People. “I’m really excited to share our relationship with readers. But Josh, my partner, my parents, and my brother, four people who I’m closest to in the family, are fairly quiet. They don’t love attention and shy away from the limelight.”

The performer known as Kal Penn was born Kalpen Suresh Modi in Montclair, New Jersey, of Gujarati immigrant parents with big dreams for their children—none of which included their son getting famous for pretending to smoke weed in films. But Modi, as he prefers to be known outside of entertainment, has gone on to do much more than bring Kumar Patel of the Harold & Kumar stoner comedy franchise to life. (His other credits include recurring roles in the television shows House, Designated Survivor, and How I Met Your Mother.) His memoir promises to delve into his unlikely career as a brown skinned Asian man who thrived in roles that eschewed damaging stereotypes. “If you’ve always grown up seeing people who look like you on screen, I totally understand why a lot of people are like, ‘Well, what’s the big deal?'” he told CBS Sunday Morning. “But to be invisible, it kind of makes you feel like your possibilities might be limited.”

Modi has turned that visibility into a platform. 

He’s been an outspoken advocate for representation and equity in entertainment and beyond, has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and surprised his manager when he left acting to work for the Obama administration as a member of the Office of Public Engagement, engaging with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on voting and policy.

“I don’t like politics; I like public service,” he told CBS Sunday Morning. “And that goes back to my grandparents who marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement. And those were the dinner table conversations that we had.”

Modi is now representing in a new, and equally important, way.

For South Asian LGBTQ people around the world, the announcement was much needed validation. The news was “the most thrilling kind of surprise,” Naveen Kumar, a 39-year-old gay man living in New York, told the BBC. “For me, it’s now a person in pop culture that I can point out to my parents. Here’s someone who they have been watching on TV and movies since the 90s.”

Like many, Kumar is hoping for Modi to have a “big, gay Indian wedding,” though that may not happen. “Josh who hates attention, has said, ‘Or we could just do quick 20-minute thing with our families and that’s it.’ So we have to meet halfway in the middle,” Modi told People.

Modi appears delighted by the response. On Sunday, he acknowledged his fans in an Instagram post. “Thank you for all the love on social media today! That’s so nice.”

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com

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