Here's a riddle we never thought we'd ask: What do Burberry, the Queen of England, and Wall Street Journal film critic Joe Morgenstern have in common? They've mistaken completely different people for Dev Patel. Well, maybe. Morgenstern thought Patel was Kal Penn, making the embarrassing error in a review of Lion. Burberry thought that Riz Ahmed was Patel in a tweet.
Now, the Queen has made the same mistake with Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar. Let's be perfectly clear: Dev Patel is Dev Patel. He is not Riz Ahmed, Kal Penn, or Kunal Nayyar. They're all different, talented guys. At this point, it's kind of getting weird that all these people are being mistaken for Patel, and that he isn't being mistaken for any of them. Like, you'd think it would happen by chance by now.
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Here's Nayyar explaining what happened during an appearance on Ellen.
“We went to London to meet the Queen, and I was playing it off as ‘whatever,’ but I was actually very nervous inside,” Nayyar said. “As soon as she enters, I begin to have the worst panic attack of my life. I start thinking, ‘Oh, there’s the Queen. I’m going to faint. Why am I going to faint? I’ve never fainted in my life.'”
The Queen, who to her credit is 91 and literally royalty, told Nayyar it was nice to see him again.
“I was like, ‘Okay, but I’m not Dev Patel,'” he told DeGeneres.
Yikes. The Queen has gotta be so embarrassed.
Watch Nayyar's appearance below.