Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh admit they ‘never had the audacity to realize' a show like ‘Deli Boys' was possible
Hollywood is full of strange casting stories, yet the one behind Hulu's Deli Boys takes the cake. Although it's now hard to imagine anyone other than Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh in the roles of Pakistani-American brothers Mir and Raj Dar, their respective casting almost didn't come to be, since they both initially auditioned for the same role. "I was auditioning for Mir," Shaikh tells Gold Derby, "and Asif, in classic Asif form, got the job. He's really good at getting jobs."
Thankfully, it worked out for the best, and the two can now laugh about it (and Shaikh even got a Gotham nomination to boot). "I didn't realize that this was a little bit of a reputation that I've had," Ali responds. "I did not know about this until [Shaikh] told me," followed by a chorus of other South Asian actors who teased him about how many roles he won out over them. Although it's said in jest, it speaks to the fact that "in other instances, there would only be one South Asian person" on a film or TV series. "You can have two people of the same ethnicity on a show. It's not that big a deal. Other shows do it all the time, but for some reason, when it comes to minorities, you can only have one of this and one of this and one of this."
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Working on Deli Boys, which is composed of mostly South Asian actors, made Ali feel "bummed out in that the experience we had on this show, working with each other" with "the amount of specificity and authenticity you can bring to a project when you have people of the culture working on it," is not the norm. "Even though you push it in the back of your head when you're working, it is weird to just be that 'only person of that group' and feeling like the token ethnic hire on the show." The experience they had on Deli Boys was "something I would've loved to have had earlier on in my career" so that he could have "the opportunity to meet, work with, and build relationships with fellow creatives who didn't have to feel like they were solely outside of the business."
Having so many South Asians is front of the camera, not just for the main cast but for most of the supporting actors and day players as well, created "this immediate shorthand on set," Shaikh adds. "It just felt like this thing that we all already knew, and that thing was, how special is this? How rare is this show? These are people who we may or may not have met over the years, and we all get to be on a set together. Usually we see each other in an audition room, and we're gunning for the same job. We never had the audacity to realize that one day we might all be able to work together. How crazy is that, that just because we're apart of an ethnic group we didn't feel like the industry would allow us to work together, because there's always only a spot for one of us."
This feeling has its roots in "never having seen" the type of show like Deli Boys before, Ali adds. "A larger effect that this show hopefully will have on both creatives and the industry is" making them realize that they "don't have to meet some weird quota," where "it has to be a show led by a white person," and "it has to be told through that lens, otherwise people who aren't of that culture won't understand it and they won't get it." Deli Boys proves "if you just have a good story and an interesting show, people will watch it. It really is that simple."
It certainly helps that Deli Boys, which centers on a pair of brothers who learn that their multimillionaire father was a secret drug kingpin, is funny and action-packed. "We're not teaching a lesson," Shaikh explains. "We're not taking a stance on anything. We're just having fun, we're being silly, we're making this stupid show that we love so much." The mix of comedy and high stakes action "really piggy-back off of each other. It's easy to play funny when the stakes are so high, because it's almost like a reversal in genre in that moment. The audience isn't expecting the switch to be so immediate," and "the comedy cuts the tension" of the high stakes at play. At the same time, "the goriness, the drama, the drug aspect of it, really cuts the tension of the comedy. So they kind of work really well together."
Ali agrees that "it's a great combination. Even though this isn't the same genre that we operate in, I think the best example of that is horror. You have these insane stakes and tension, and then you subvert that by using comedy and levity." When it comes to Deli Boys, "the higher the stakes are," the harder the jokes hit, "because there is an authenticity to our freak-outs." Mir and Raj are "extremely stressed out" by the situation they suddenly find themselves in after their father dies and their Aunt Lucky (Recent Gotham Award winner Poorna Jagannathan) steps in. "They're at their limits and they're being pushed," and playing that for real "makes it more fun, because you get to play a full range."
Being able to show "the full three dimensions of the stress and the pressure and the stakes," then getting to "lift that through the comedy" is a rarity for Ali because of how "unfortunately, the way things have been" in this industry. "People that look like us would not have been able to have that experience, playing characters like that, with that much scope." Now, finally, they have.
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