Series creator and writer Abdullah Saeed, along with Asif Ali, Saagar Shaikh, Poorna Jagannathan of 'Deli Boys,' drop in at our studio in Park City to talk about the importance of cultural pride and representation that has gone into creating their Hulu series.
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00:00I was given a gift and I will keep wearing it until the day I die.
00:03He also just doesn't own another jacket.
00:06Yeah, what if I told you I had a very slim closet?
00:09He came to Sundance with this as his puffer.
00:12This is from the camera, this is a gift from the camera department.
00:16Yo, shout out Drew Weed.
00:20And that whole team, they made these for us and it's not often you get like a wrap gift
00:24that is actually something you would want to wear.
00:25Look at the back, look at the back.
00:26Look at this.
00:28So that actually, in fact what that is, is the mural outside of the deli.
00:33The tiger is the Darko symbol.
00:40I came up with these two guys as sort of like two halves of not only my personality,
00:45but anyone with immigrant roots, right, has that side of their mind that's like,
00:50oh okay, I should honor my parents and all their struggle and hard work, you know,
00:54coming to this country.
00:56Or the other half, which is like, I should enjoy the fruits of their labor
01:00and then just be like a heathens.
01:02And I thought it'd be interesting to externalize that conversation, honestly,
01:05just as a mechanism for jokes, right, which is the most important thing to me.
01:10In life.
01:10Yes, yes.
01:11And so, you know, but once these characters start to exist like that on the page, right,
01:16like I knew that it was working for me and I really liked it,
01:20but it was when other people started reading it and being like, wow,
01:24there's really something here behind the words they're saying and the things they're doing
01:27that feels like they're real, you know.
01:29And then, of course, the convenience store aspect,
01:32my family has historically owned a lot of franchise businesses,
01:36like a lot of Pakistani and Indian immigrants to this country, right.
01:40And it's something that is seen as a point of embarrassment or as a point of like,
01:45oh, that's like a thing to make fun of, like a weird stereotype.
01:48But honestly, I was like, I worked the counter at a 7-Eleven,
01:52you know, at a convenience store and I had a good time.
01:55Famously so.
01:56Yeah, right.
01:57And I did my job.
01:58I did my thing.
01:59I had some interesting experiences, right.
02:02None quite like what you end up seeing in the show, but where that comes from.
02:06So I was essentially like, I want to retake this stereotype, right.
02:11Set in Philadelphia and there are no bodegas in Philadelphia.
02:15We're from Philadelphia.
02:16So I think not bodegas and not what's your store?
02:20Corner store.
02:21Or convenience store.
02:22Convenience store.
02:23Corner store.
02:24Corner stores are different.
02:25Do you guys call stores wawas or is that only Delaware?
02:28No, wawa is a specific drink.
02:31Yeah, we used to call them a stab and grab too.
02:35Yeah, like a random term for it.
02:37But yes, they're delis or stab and grabs.
02:40I guess that's true.
02:41Yeah, but I mean, always, I think like, I think it's also convenience stores, right?
02:49They're ABC delis, but the C stands for convenience, right?
02:53Yeah, exactly.
02:55Yeah, I grew up in a gas station family.
02:57My dad worked at one until I was like 11 and then he bought his own.
03:02And yeah, I say convenience store.
03:07So this is the Texas vernacular.
03:09Yeah, interesting.
03:10You know, we pitched it to a lot of places.
03:12A lot of places passed on it.
03:14And then we pitched it to one last place that happened to be Onyx Collective.
03:19And it's a place that's filled with black and brown people with diverse voices.
03:24And I felt right at home, honestly.
03:28You know, like after getting all those passes, I feel like in that pitch, like
03:31I had let everything go, you know, so I wasn't so like, oh, you know,
03:35and I think that probably helped.
03:37And then once we were in, you know, I found myself at times being like,
03:40all right, explaining, right?
03:41Okay, so, you know, South Asians are this, there's Pakistanis, Indians.
03:44And a lot of the people I work with at 20th and at Onyx are like, yeah, we know.
03:49So, you know, it's like.
03:50Which is not a common thing.
03:52Yeah, right.
03:53And it saves so much energy, you know, in terms of having to frame things for people.
03:58So, you know, Anil, our, you know, main exec at Onyx, he's a brown dude.
04:05He's an Indian American dude.
04:06Like, I don't have to explain every little thing to him.
04:09Like, he gets it, you know what I mean?
04:11Which has been really cool.
04:12And also Onyx, like Tara Duncan said, I want stories that are really ordinary.
04:17That's, you know, the fact that they're being told by brown and black people,
04:21like the fact that we are a Delhi family, but dealing cocaine,
04:26like that is the extraordinary part.
04:28But it's an ordinary story.
04:30Right, right.
04:30It's not special because we're brown.
04:32Yeah, we just happen to be brown.
04:34That's right.
04:35It's not centered on identity.
04:37It's not centered off like a common.
04:39It's nothing.
04:40It is just a fucking funny show.
04:43And it's ordinary and it's fantastic.
04:45Was there anything that you like wrote into the script
04:48that then became a challenge to, like, realize?
04:53I was thinking about this.
04:55It's not, it wasn't the blood so much as the vomit.
05:00Your vomit thing was something that was so far,
05:04much more violent than anything that I'd ever seen.
05:07Plus, it was crazy.
05:09Yeah, seeing playback on that was like, yikes.
05:11Yeah, it was so funny.
05:12And he's like, he project the Obamas onto his crot.
05:16It's, it's so much.
05:18The story is that it's so much vomit.
05:21Like it's not projected.
05:22It's not like whatever, right?
05:24It is like a bucket of vomit.
05:26But both these two have apparently vomited like that.
05:30And they're like, oh, wait, you want that?
05:32So they're, they're recreating.
05:34I vomited like that at his wedding.
05:37It's cool.
05:38It's cool.
05:40Hypermeses.
05:40Carrick is hypermeses, right?
05:42There's a term for that.
05:44Yeah, Kate Middleton had that.
05:46Shout out to Kate Middleton.
05:48Oh, yeah.
05:48Target audience.
05:49She gets it, she gets it.
05:50Yeah, she does.
05:52But yeah, no, cannabis hypermeses is essentially like an overdose, right?
05:57So at least that's how I experienced it.
05:58For some people, hey, look, other drugs, you overdose, you die.
06:02Yeah, that's true.
06:03You know what I mean?
06:03It's just really funny for like, you just.
06:06Exactly.
06:06But the effect of the effects team was like really good.
06:09And they really wanted to make sure that because the show is a comedy, and it deals with like a,
06:14you know, dark subject matter, that it still remained a comedy by putting the violence and
06:20the vomit and all that stuff at a place where it's still funny.
06:23You know, that vomit thing is, is, is it's hysterical purely because they're going the
06:28extra mile and making it so.
06:30Not only it was like the force, the PSI in that thing.
06:32Oh, my God.
06:34That was a question.
06:36I moved backwards.
06:37Yeah.
06:37Asif does his signature scream.
06:40Like, I didn't know I had a signature scream, but I do.
06:42Yeah, yeah.
06:43Oh, dude.
06:44And his eyes, like he'll do this with his eyes, like.