Kal Penn wants Dev Patel to play the younger him on screen: 'I'm too old now'

Kal Penn has revealed who he'd like to play him in an on-camera version of his new memoir, You Can't Be Serious, which came out on Tuesday.

"My dream scenario is it does really well. It gets on all the bestseller lists and then I can sell the rights to it and hire Dev Patel to play the young me," Penn, 44, said Wednesday at an online event for the Smithsonian. "I'm too old now ... maybe turn it into a Netflix series if he'll do it."

The Oscar-nominated Patel, 31, was once mistakenly credited with Penn's performance in The Namesake.

Penn's new book also includes stories about the bullies he dealt with in middle school while growing up in New Jersey, racism in the entertainment industry, his time working in the Obama White House and his relationship with his partner of 11 years, Josh. While he hadn't previously addressed his sexuality, he revealed in a People story published Sunday that he and Josh are engaged.

"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 the magazine. "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."

During his livestream talk, he said that the chapter of his book about Josh was "one of the easiest to write."

He described his fiancé as "very quiet, very understated," much like his parents.

"Whenever he's come to visit me on the set or have lunch with co-workers or if we're going out with friends, same as my parents," Penn said, "we'll pull up to a premiere or something and they'll all get out first ... and they're like, 'We'll see you inside.'"