Imagine being a wealthy and privileged Pakistani American kid who lives off their father’s money and with no care in the world. Then, all of a sudden, your father passes away, leaving you to fend for yourself because you learn about the actual business behind your father’s empire – drugs and money laundering.
Abdullah Saeed, the creator of Deli Boys, just wanted to create a story about two very different brothers dealing with losing their father. The drug mafia element just became a spec portion to make the story stand out — and it worked.
“It’s the framing for the script to stand out from the other scripts that people might be reading as a sample,” Saeed tells The Nerds of Color.
Showrunner Michelle Nader cuts in, “[Abdullah] is so modest. He’s a journalist. He’s a rapper. He’s the best of everything. He has this worldview that brings in so many elements. That’s what the script read and the rest of the season is just that.”
While the mafia aspect draws people into the series, what makes it work is the connection between the two brothers — Raj (Saagar Shaikh) and Mir (Asif Ali). The relationship between the two grieving brothers is the heart of the series. Saeed based the story on his relationship with his brother but credits Nader with honing his thoughts into a script.
“I need to be reined in, because what you’re seeing is my thoughts tempered in a sense,” says Saeed. “[Michelle] is the one tempering them. If left unbridled, I would go in ridiculous directions. Michelle is the most hilarious person ever and has it down to a science.”
Shaikh, who says his favorite shows include mafia shows like The Sopranos and Narcos, never imagined himself in a story like this. He credits Saeed, Nader, and executive producer Jenni Konner for bringing him and Ali together.
“It’s truly the best time I get to work with the best people in the business,” says Shaikh. “[Asif] is so funny and has such good energy. They made it feel like a safe space for everybody to work on.”
The series plays with Pakistani and Indian tropes and stereotypes but takes ownership of them by calling them out. In one scene, a Pakistani family and an Indian family get into a shouting match about each other’s culture. The team of writers, which includes South Asians, SWANA/MENA, and more, “got to play with a lot of [those] things.”
Saeed says, “Just speaking towards the fact that South Asians, despite post-colonially being different countries, we have very similar roots. We share a lot of culture. I’m a big proponent of being a unit in the United States. We don’t need to have beef between Hindus and Muslims and Indians and Pakistanis. We should recognize that we’re brethren in a lot of ways.”
Ali, who talks about growing up Indian (as well as other hilarious topics) in his stand-up, was excited to be part of a comedy with drama, action, and gore — something he’d never seen in this capacity before. There haven’t been many South Asian American gangster stories… ever.
“It’s a very rare that you get the opportunity to be on a show that feels like something you’ve never seen on TV before,” says Ali. “Even if I didn’t get on this show, I still want to see the show and see how they take what’s on this page and make it into something onscreen. It was a pleasure to make. It was so fun to be in a genre that shows people who look like us, and this is our experience in America. We’re just people who are flawed like everybody else, but we’re in these crazy circumstances in this insane genre.”
Check out the full interview below:
Deli Boys is out now on Hulu.
