When Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle debuted in the summer of 2004, I’m not sure where I was.

The stoner comedy about best friends in search of the elusive restaurant chain fell under my radar, and many people would say the same. Despite positive critical reviews and raves from folks like director Quentin Tarantino of Kill Bill fame, the movie premiered at a disappointing seventh place and only dropped steadily in numbers throughout its theatrical run.

When my roommate and I rented the comedy at Safeway during my freshman year, I had never heard of it. What started as a way to pass time became a weekend obsession — we watched the film three times, at one point stopping the movie Troy to watch the comedy again.

I was thrilled to hear news of a sequel, opening in theaters tomorrow. The stars of Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, John Cho (American Pie) and Kal Penn (The Namesake), answer questions from college editors regarding the upcoming film, racial stereotypes and the possibilities of a third movie.

*Warning, plot details from both films are mentioned.

Were you surprised at the cult-like following that the first movie garnered?

John Cho (JC): Yes … and no. We were hoping it would be a box office success, and it really wasn’t. So we were disappointed initially, but we hoped it would be a hit on DVD and it was, slowly but surely. And it took a long time for it to get there, but better late then never. We always felt the movie would find its audience somehow at some point.

How is Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay different from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle?

JC: The first movie was plotless, and it involved us getting high, getting hungry, looking for a burger place and then a bunch of stuff happened to us on the way to the burger place. And this movie has a very traditional or much more traditional plot with really high stakes. So that is what I would say is the primary difference, and then in other respects I think we tried to — as a good sequel should — ramp up everything.

How do you feel that Harold & Kumar films deal with the issue of racial stereotypes?

Kal Penn (KP): Typecasting exists no matter what you look like, but certainly there is stereotyping that is more unique to Asian Americans or South Asian Americans, and I really like the way in which (screenwriters0 Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg totally deconstruct a lot of those stereotypes just with the use of humor, and I think that’s great. It’s certainly a more subversive way. The thing I really love about Harold and Kumar is that they’re two All-Americans guys who are going on a journey, and along that journey you’re able to deconstruct race in a very smart, witty way, but the movie is certainly not about that, it’s just about two guys who you can relate to. Which I think is greatest statement of how far we’ve come with a film like that.

Do you guys take personal credit for the resurrection of Neil Patrick Harris’ career?

KP: Yeah, I want to take credit for it right now. No, I think Neil has talked about how Jon and Hayden’s script and playing the part has opened up some other opportunities for him. What do you think, Cho?

JC: Yeah, I think he’s been open about that. I think that Harold & Kumar, the first movie, allowed people to see him in a different light, and I believe he has said, “I don’t think I’d be on How I Met Your Mother without Harold & Kumar.”

Where did you guys go to college, if you went to college, and what did you study?

JC: DeVry, Welding. I went to UC-Berkeley and I studied English lit.

KP: I went to UCLA and studied sociology and theater, film & television and I’m very slowly doing a grad program at Stanford in international security and international studies.

Is there an experience that stands out from your childhood when you were stereotyped by peers, and what happened and how did you react?

JC: Pick one.

KP: Yeah, really.

JC: I grew up in the South. I moved to the United States at the age of 6 to Houston, Texas, and it wasn’t a terrible upbringing. It just was an environment where there weren’t many Asians, and I’m trying to think of a specific story, but, I mean, there’s kind of a lot. It was just an environment where people were suspicious of the new people and didn’t really consider us one of them, you know? I don’t know what else to say about it.

KP: I have one. I hate the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, even to this day. … There’s this absurd scene that it seems they insisted on putting in the movie, where it’s fictitious, but for some reason they made this place India. And these people are eating like snakes and monkey brains and weird stuff like that. And I remember going into lunch the weekend after this movie came out in elementary school, and nobody would sit next to me. It was like, “Ahh, you got monkey brains in your sandwich.” People, especially kids, when they see movies like that, they can’t necessarily associate fact from fiction. … I was raised in New Jersey, and you just realize the pervasiveness of some of those images, especially in a great, well-written story like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It would have been very easy for them, whoever the producers or directors were, to maintain that as a fictitious place.

Will we see any future Harold & Kumar spin-offs or sequels, or is that unknown at this point?

JC: Unknown, I think, and I think it would depend on how people react to this one. Really it just depends on whether people vote with their dollars for this movie, just like the first one.

KP: Yeah, I would second that. The reason we have a sequel now is because of the support from fans on the DVD. But we’re also four years older, so if you want to see a third movie, would you please go see it opening weekend — then we can make it next year instead of four years from now when we will be considerably older.

How has the chemistry between you and John Cho evolved since the first film?

KP: We didn’t know each other before we were both cast [in the first film]. And we went up to Toronto, Canada, where we shot Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, and for about the first week we were there we decided, you know, we have to hang out as much as possible, because the characters we’re playing have known each other since college, or before college. Within that week we realized that we, in real life, have a lot in common, completely different from the characters, of course. We would go to a bookstore or something and just talk about literature. So, in real life we have a lot of similar interest also, which definitely, when you’re comfortable with somebody, it makes the experience of working with them a lot easier, too. Incidentally, Harold and Kumar haven’t evolved very much [since the first movie], but John Cho and Kal Penn have. So, that was then the challenge: putting Harold and Kumar’s relationship back in place.