Kal Penn has left the building … the Executive Office Building, that is.
Months after TheWrap revealed that the former “House” regular hadn’t actually left his job with the Obama administration — when it was widely reported he had — Penn finally really has.
Actually, it turns out he left three weeks ago.
"In order to fulfill a commitment he made prior to the start of his employ here, Mr. Modi resigned his post on June 1," White House director of specialty media Shin Inouye said Wednesday, using the actor’s real name of Kalpen Modi.
That commitment is widely assumed to be lighting up a fat one again as the pot-smoking med student in the stoner “Harold and Kumar” comedy franchise. “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas,” with John Cho and Neil Patrick Harris (who plays himself in the films) also returning to their roles, is expected to be released later this year.
Like his leaving D.C., Penn’s arrival there wasn’t without controversy.
Though the actor announced in that he was leaving Hollywood for Washington in April 2009, Penn, as TheWrap reported last year, didn’t take up his White House duties for almost three more months. A delay that the White House wanted after his sudden on-air exit from “House,” Inouye told TheWrap in June 2009 that "the suicide of his character on 'House' was quite shocking, so everyone thought there should be a bit of timely delay before he takes up work for the administration.”
Penn, an early supporter of Barack Obama when he was running for president, eventually took a position as an associate director in the Obama administration’s Office of Public Engagement last July. Penn, who hit the news in April after being robbed at gunpoint in D.C., was a liaison for the administration to the Asian American and arts communities.
