Kumail Nanjiani says that movie critics were so harsh on his Marvel movie from a few years ago that he thought it'd be best to get on the couch and see a shrink about it ... yep.
The actor -- who played one of the leads in 2021's "Eternals" -- told the tale on the "Inside of You" podcast with Michael Rosenbaum ... where he explained that the work he put into it didn't match the reaction, at least in his eyes.
KN said the reviews were terrible, and he was a little too aware of it -- going on to explain that he was reading each think piece about his movie, which apparently bothered him a lot.
He also notes that it was affecting his home life, adding ... "It was really hard, and that was when I thought it was unfair to me and unfair to [my wife] Emily, and I can’t approach my work this way anymore. Some s*** has to change, so I started counseling. I still talk to my therapist about that."
Even now, Kumail thinks he's still suffering from the experience -- saying ... "Emily says that I do have trauma from it. We actually just got dinner with somebody else from that movie and we were like, 'That was tough, wasn’t it?’ and he’s like ‘Yeah, that was really tough.'
With that said, he thinks the film is actually pretty solid -- and believes the reason it got crapped on at the time had more to do with the atmosphere and the zeitgeist at the time.