Abdullah Saeed wasn’t looking to write a groundbreaking comedy. He was just looking for a job.
The “Deli Boys” creator wrote a sample script in 2019, hoping to secure a staff position in a writers’ room after transitioning from journalism to screenwriting. (“Nobody was buying my documentaries,” jokes Saeed.) He had recently co-written a script for a feature film, but needed something to showcase his own voice.
Saeed sat down to write without worry about representing his entire community, and decided to freely create a show that was as lighthearted as he is.
“The pressure was off because I didn’t think it was going to be a TV show. I was just like, ‘OK, whatever, I think that’s funny,'” said the Pakistani American writer.
“Deli Boys” soon landed in front of television writers and producers Jenni Konner (“Girls”) and Nora Silver (“Single Drunk Female”), who immediately wanted to do more than hire Saeed. They wanted to develop the half-hour pilot and bring it to life.
“It was so unique and so funny and fresh, and (there is) nothing like that in the world, ever,” said Konner who later brought on showrunner Michelle Nader (“2 Broke Girls”).
The 10-episode Hulu original comedy presented by Onyx Collective stars Saagar Shaikh (“Ms. Marvel”), Asif Ali (“WandaVision”) and Poorna Jagannathan. Premiering today (3/6), “Deli Boys” follows two Pakistani American brothers, Raj and Mir — played by Shaikh and Ali — who lose their comfortable lifestyles after their convenience store mogul father (Iqbal Theba) dies unexpectedly from a golfing accident. Raj and Mir must now work together to take over the family business, but soon learn they are in way over their heads when they discover the stores were a front for cocaine distribution.
Saeed, who used to cover stories centered on music, cannabis and recreational drugs, says he was inspired by the “unverified stories about stealth and smuggling” that he heard over the years.
“It’s just lore,” he said of the stories he was never able to report out. “But in this show, we can borrow all that stuff, right? And so, like, there’s all these elements about, you know, stealth, like how you actually package and move drugs that really made their way into the show.”
The brothers at the show’s heart are two complete opposites who have to find themselves while being comically thrust into the drug-smuggling underworld: Raj is the free spirit who relies on cannabis, his shaman and good looks to get him by, while Mir is the buttoned-up, model child looking to make his father proud.
“It was great to finally, for the first time, be a flawed character not a model minority,” said Shaikh. “The spectrum for white shows goes from like, ‘Full House’ to “It’s Always Sunny.’ And, you know, we are, like them, not a monolith, right? We have different stories. We have different values from house to house. We have different cultures from house to house. And we rarely get to see any nuance.”
For Ali, portraying Mir was something he never would have imagined.
“It really is above just being, you know, an exploration of what being South Asian is,” said Ali. “It’s something that I have never seen our community have before. Just like straight-up crazy comedy.”
Jagannathan plays their father’s right-hand woman Lucky, who quickly takes the boys under her wing in an effort to salvage the family’s dwindling drug operation. According to Jagannathan, Lucky was initially written as a man until Saeed was advised to go back to his script and change two characters from men to women. Soon, Lucky became a blend of Saeed’s mother, whom he describes as a “self-starting, headstrong badass,” executive producers Silver and Konner, Nader and Jagannathan’s past roles as a mother on “Never Have I Ever” and “The Night Of.”
“She’s sweet and loving and nurturing and then the next scene is her putting a bullet in someone’s head,” said Jagannathan. “And I think the juxtaposition of that is so funny, but the script has so much of that. It’s the expected with the unexpected right next door.”
The cast also includes Alfie Fuller (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) and Brian George, a familiar face to “Seinfeld” and “The Big Bang Theory” fans who is now front and center as Lucky’s second-in-command. Guest stars for this season also include “Queer Eye’s” Tan France, who makes his acting debut in the sixth episode.
“I saw the script, and it was a fully formed character. I was so nervous. But the first day I got on that set, I had the best experience,” said France, who initially thought he was only going to play a small role.
Saeed and Konner hope the show will have the opportunity to welcome more South Asian guest stars in later seasons. “There’s a lot of people we would die to have,” said Konner.
“And then for each of them, we’ve now set this thing up for ourselves where they have to play someone against type,” said Saeed. “So, that makes it more fun for us if we get somebody huge, right? And we’ve only seen them one way; we get to put them into something different.”
