TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Hi. My name is Abdullah Saeed. I'm a writer and producer and the creator of the new Hulu comedy series, Deli Boys, and you're listening to trust me. I know what I'm doing. Yeah.

My name is Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with talented and interesting individuals linked to the global Indian and South Asian community. It's informal and informative, adding insights to our evolving cultural expressions, where each person can proudly say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. Hi, everyone. On this episode of Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing, we share a conversation with the creator of the show, Deli Boys, Abdullah Saeed. Stay tuned.

As always, thank you so much for listening and watching and making Trust Me I Know What I'm Doing part of your day and even a small part of your life. I know it takes time and effort, and so I appreciate you engaging, subscribing, rating, and writing reviews, and sharing this with all your friends and family. You can listen at all the podcast outlets everywhere and watch the episodes on YouTube and follow along on social media. Now explosive turns and twists, they are the essence of life surprises, the peaks, the valleys, and all the sightseeing on the journey. While we all know that they're coming, the anticipation of the timing and sometimes the sheer absurdity and randomness of those turns and twists keep us on edge, teetering and tottering between pain and anguish and joy and laughter.

So when I had a chance to catch up recently with writer and producer, Abdullah Syed, it was pretty clear from the get go that this was someone who not only gets the range of that teetering and tottering, but also knows how to channel this into a digestible panorama that many can relate to. Abdullah is a Pakistani American and the creator of the new Hulu series, Deli Boys, a crime comedy that serves up the South Asian American convenience store experience in the front with the unexpected family business behind it. His own journey informs it all, spending formative years in Thailand, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, and eventually to LA where he found his expressive home showcasing life and art around music and marijuana. Abdullah had done stand up comedy and acting, but it was the pitch to get deli boys made and released where it seems like his inner creative voice is being heard with great resonance in a way that isn't simply to rectify or justify American immigrant family culture, but rather to show the everyday messy juxtapositions that we find endearing, audacious, unbelievable, morally challenging, and inevitably tickling and funny. Abdullah is also married to actor Alexandra Ruddy and maybe drew some inspiration from his late father-in-law who was a producer of The Godfather and a creator of the show Hogan's Heroes.

We recently caught up to chat about everything from some of the nuances of making Deli Boys to vulnerability and courage with storytelling to cultivating trust on this project. But with so many angles to his expressions, the music, the comedy, the advocacy, and now having a hit show on Hulu, I had to first hear more about his humble LinkedIn profile stating that he's an underachiever and proud of it. It still says that. It still says that. Right.

I must have put that on, like, not that long ago, but I haven't touched the rest of the, LinkedIn profile in many years. I feel fortunate because I was not good at the conventional job getting, mechanism. You know what I mean? So I I poured a lot of time into making resumes, into making that LinkedIn page. And, that is, of course, a Bart Simpson quote.

I love it. Yeah. I mean, first off, any any way to tether and and tentacle the the Simpsons into just about every aspect of life is important. Yeah. And and yet, like, you know, for the most part, with all of these things that are going on in the let's let's call it the Abdulla verse, you know, all of that is not quite on the periphery sounding like a whole lot of of underachieving.

I mean, is is there something that that you feel like, you know, hey. These are just like, you know, this is just who I am. I'm putting it out there. And if someone likes to call it over or underachieving, so be it. Yeah.

You know, I think there's a couple of great question, by the way. Like, see, no one else has asked me this. And and this this is definitely the kinda thing I feel like that gets to the heart of who I am. In that, you know, conventionally speaking, I'm a a stoner. I'm a, you know, musician.

I'm a lot of things that I think by conventional understanding would be, like, kind of a, like, a a scofflaw or a scrub or something like that. Right? But, of course, like, all I'm really doing is expressing myself in the only way I know how to do it. I think that I've always wanted the world to see me as a serious person, for lack of a better word. Right?

And it's like a kind of thing that I've struggled against a little bit because just like my affectation, my vibe, my sense of humor, I laugh like an insane person, like, very easily. So, you know, like, I've I've always had this feeling of being, like, a bit of a Bart Simpson, sort of being underestimated in some ways. Right? But But I also love to own that. I love punks and scofflaws and outlaws.

Right? Like and that's really who I speak to. Whether it's in cannabis world or it's brown kids who just didn't fit in. Right? Like, that's really who I'm here for.

I wanna be their avatar. Because I do think that people like that have a, you know, have a different take on how we gotta live our lives. And I think that now more than ever, we need a a different take. Right? So yeah.

You know, and and I I also there's another side to it that's more personal. I am told that I generate a lot of stuff, whether it's music or or writing or anything else, but it's a fraction of what's going on in my head or the ideas that I have in my stack. Like, I look at myself as a person who does not spend enough time writing, and I I kinda beat myself up about it. And I love to write, which is, I'm told, kind of unique among screenwriters. Like, my favorite thing is to sit right here at this desk I'm talking to you at and write.

You know? It gets stoned and write. It's like my greatest joy. I love the writers' room. I love being on set.

I love every aspect of doing this show. But to me, sitting here and writing is the best. And, you know, like, there's so many things. Like, my stack is so high. I have to do rewrites, you know, on my own stuff.

And this is all self started stuff. Right? Like, I I have that delusion of a screenwriter where you start writing something you pour hundreds of hours into it assuming that people are going to wanna read it or perhaps produce it. Right? And it takes that kind of delusion.

But, yeah, the reason I see myself as an underachiever is that I have a lot of unfinished stuff sitting on my pile. That's that's always the dilemma. Right? That, like, you know, there there's the stuff that's out there. There's the stuff that's piled up on your desk, and then there's even the more volumes that are just sitting in your head.

And and you can't even, like, you know, you know, process it. And yet being the kind of voice of the scofflaw, being the sort of stoner guy who's who's writing. I mean, to a degree to even get that expression out there takes some courage and some vulnerability and the ability to just say, hey. Here's who I am and and here you know, take it or leave it. And and with that courage or vulnerability, did you find particularly that you had to harness or even practice some of that when it came to getting deli boys out there?

And, I mean, even in just like the the soup to nuts process, but furthermore, just being able now that people are experiencing it. Was there an element of of courage and vulnerability that you found, you know, hey. This is this is a part of my practice, of courage and vulnerability. Absolutely, man. Again, another great quest a great question, my dude.

But yeah. So, you know, I I started out as a a journalist, right, Telling other people's stories, but then when I started writing Weetiquette, my long running column advice, that was much more personal. It was like personal stories for my life, and, you know, they were true. All every story was true. Right?

And it involved cannabis in some way, involved my family and my friends. I got this very positive response. But then, of course, I also got some judgment. Right? I got some judgment from brown people who don't understand that cannabis is our heritage and that our aversion to it is a post colonial mindset.

Right? Really, when I learned to take the mask off in a way, it it was a couple of different things coming together. Right? And, actually, you know, Jesse Bradford, who's a great actor and a friend of mine, the first guy I lived with when I came to LA, I I remember distinctly him describing that, you know, it when you're performing, when you're acting, you're, taking layers off as opposed to putting layers on. You know what I mean?

Like, you're showing parts of yourself that the world doesn't see normally. And and for me, really, stand up was a big entry into that. So the way I started doing stand up was, you know, I did a storytelling show. You know, I'm a type of person who, if I'm 40% sure that I can do something, I will tell you 100%, yes. I can do it.

Right? So somebody, you know, asked me if I wanted to do a storytelling show, my friend Lindsay Haims. And, you know, I performed and, Eric Andre and DJ Doug Pound, who's who's, you know, longtime editor, were both performers on there. They both said I was funny, and Eric Andre was like, do you do stand up? And I was like, no.

I've never done it. This is the first time I've done it. He was like, you should give it a try. And I took this as a real glowing endorsement that I should start doing stand up. Right?

And so I started to do it. And, you know, of course, the stories you're telling in stand up are fictionalized to a degree, but I think the best stand up is partially embellished and also rooted in something true and real. Right? Yeah. So I was telling stories about being, like, a Muslim in a Uber with a guy who's more Muslim than I am, and so he wants to have a Muslim off.

Right? He wants to have, like, a contest with me or whatever. Things like that that really get to the heart of my identity, and I felt like I was showing parts of myself, and you're getting an immediate response. Right? Yeah.

So that taught me to not only accept when people didn't have a a positive reaction to what I was saying. Right? But also that when they did to, like, to feel the joy of that, that you're putting yourself out there. Right? It's really hard to be vulnerable as a man, right?

Especially a man, straight man who was raised on nineties media, that didn't have, that much guiding force in terms of how to be a man in the world, right? And so, you know, doing this stuff, it was difficult. And ever since I came to LA, like, eight years ago, I came knowing that I have things that I need to work on and unpack, like, from my past, you know, like, traumas, things like that. And doing therapy and getting on antidepressants, I feel like are one side of it, and the other side was learning to find myself, the real self. You know, like, I always say that, you know, the jokes are the most important thing to me.

They are. Right? But it is also, like, it's true that it's it's the heart of the characters to me that is, you know, that's the life of the show in a lot of ways. Right? I I think the jokes are a technical aspect of it in some ways that I really enjoy.

But, you know, I I've had to sort of figure myself out. Another way was I was doing auditions. Right? I think a lot of multi hyphenates, when they get representation, they start getting auditions, but you never really know what you're doing. Right?

Like, it's a specific art to audition, separate from acting even in some ways. Right? And my wife is a very experienced auditioner and actor and has been, you know, a working actor for for many, many years. And I would look at these auditions and be like, I don't know what the hell this is. And she clarified it for me.

She was like, first of all, you're getting better auditions than most people do because of the shows you've just been on and all that. So don't look that in the mouth. Right? And that's how I learned to appreciate the struggle and the grind of an actor. Like, they are out here and they put themselves out there, man.

They they really, like, put their heart on a platter and they deal with so much rejection and judgment and stuff. I really gained a lot of empathy for actors just through my wife, and then also approaching those specific auditions in that way. Now I am not a very good actor. I didn't get a lot of traction, you know, didn't I don't know if I ever got a callback, maybe once. I think I got a callback on What We Do in the Shadows, and it was, like, the greatest moment of my life.

Right? But Right. And then then didn't get the job. But but, you know, like, I really did learn to read the script from the perspective of an actor. Actors understand my pages better than I do sometimes.

They find things in the characters that bring them to life. You know, so it really was sort of looking at that. And then, of course, you know, all of that came together to help me be a better pitcher. You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, getting in the room, telling them your perspective, and also, you know, my fellow EP's, Jenny, you know, especially, on daily boys, encouraged me to be myself.

You know what I mean? And and to let that out. Now for so much of my life, right, right, we were talking about my LinkedIn page earlier. For so much of my life, I was trying to hide who I really was behind those credentials because I thought that was the only way to get a job and earn a living. Right?

And I it took me a while to realize that it's about being myself. It it took graduating into, like, a terrible economy and being kind of an underachieving student, not getting many job prospects, not getting opportunities to earn in a, you know, quote, unquote conventional way, and so finding random freelance writing jobs, you know, playing music, DJing, doing all that stuff. I was sort of passed into that world without an understanding that there's any way to make a living off. I I have, you know, a Desi family. No one was ever like, yeah.

Entertainment's a really viable path to Right. Yeah. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Right? But I think, you know, what you're talking about a lot here is that being yourself, being authentic, at least sort of like getting that courage and feeling vulnerable and putting yourself out there, that does drive a lot of empathy.

That does relate to people. That does cultivate trust. You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. After a quick break, we'll come back to our conversation with the creator of the show, Deli Boys, Abdullah Saeed. Stay tuned.

Conversation. It's the antidote to apathy and the catalyst for relationships. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me. I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hi. I'm Vivek Murthy. I'm the twenty first surgeon general of The United States, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Hi, everyone. This is Chef Vikas Khanna.

Hi. My name is Richa Moorjani. Hello, everyone. My name is Tam France. Hi.

I'm congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, and you are listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Welcome back to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with Abdullah Saeed. And And it's almost like that that story you're telling of, like, who can out Muslim the other. You know, there's just such an absurdity to that.

Right? And and we all find comfort and normalcy and sometimes nurturing from the absurd. And that actually makes it helps us to, you know, sort of actually be courageous, be vulnerable. And and those kind of maybe unexpected juxtapositions that are out there. Right?

Crime and bloodshed with comedy. Halal and Haram. The stories in Philly, but the filming's in Chicago. Your father-in-law created this comedy based in a Nazi prison. Yeah.

You know, so the those kind of thematic contrast, are those particularly things that sort of tickle you or you crave in a way to push the kind of boundaries on things? And and even to a degree motivate that big giant stack of stuff that's sitting on your desk or in your head. Absolutely, man. And, you know, it's juxtaposition, I think, is at the heart of comedy. It's it's at the heart of immigrant storytelling in a lot of ways.

Right? Yep. So, you know, yeah, my whole life, I've been balancing those two sides. Right? And, really, I think it's like those dichotomies emerge, right, to confirm that you're doing a good job, that you're doing the right thing, right?

The world will deliver them to you. You just have to recognize when that diversity and thought or concept is going to serve you, right, which I think is very often. You know, I think diversity and thought and concept is actually like at the heart of being a good human in a lot of ways, right? And, you know, I look at my father-in-law, my mentor, Al Ruddy, and he was with Deliboys every step of the way. Like, even when his eyes were deteriorating and he couldn't read, he would have his assistant print, like, giant font, page script pages.

He watched the pilot. You know, he saw Ali's rushes, and he was so supportive of it. And I thought it was incredible that this very prestigious filmmaker had such a close relationship with me, like a punk Muslim kid. Right? And Al, in the That's the juxtaposition.

Right? Yeah. And and never crossed his mind once. I mean, this 94 year old white Jewish man, right, He just loved me, and and and I loved him, and it was this beautiful relationship. Right?

And, you know, the fact that he started his career in entertainment by making jokes within the most dire and tragic circumstance that that we know of. Right? I just thought that was so incredible, and that was really up my alley. Like, you know, look, I I do jokes in my stand up that are a little clubby, if you will. They're, like, a little edgy or uncomfortable because if there's certain settings in which that really works.

Right? And so I'll make jokes about Muslims that people are, like, should I be laughing at this or whatever? But I'm, like, well, I get to make those jokes. Right? Because, like, I've had the lived experience of of being this person, and I'm inviting people to laugh at it with me.

Right? And I think a lot of that also goes into I mean, I think a lot of that went into Deli boys as well. Right? Like, I've been a a drug advocate my whole life. I I believe that the lines that we draw between food, drugs, and medicine are completely arbitrary.

And the fact that we end people's lives effectively by throwing them in jail over these delineations is is, like, absolutely ridiculous. Right? And so you would say that a person like me would never make a show that trivializes a dangerous, quote, unquote, dangerous drug like cocaine. Right? And yet in this show, there is no apology.

We don't talk about the other side of it. We don't talk about the human cost of this thing because that's not our lot. We are not the place. You you should not be coming to this show for morality. Right?

And yet, my background is in journal journalism, which you would hope at its best is centered on morality in some way. Yeah. You would hope. Yeah. Right?

Or at least showing you the fact that invoking some sort of ethical response from you. Right? Yeah. And so it's a wild swing from one thing to the other. But, really, I'm just following the path that was laid in front of me, my man.

Like, it it was truly, like, because I was doing documentary, and I felt called to do documentary about drugs and to do drugs on camera and to do all that stuff and to to shed light on all these stories. Right? But then I just lost the opportunity to do it. You know? Like Yeah.

People weren't buying my documentaries, but somebody bought, you know, a script for for myself and and my friend Ben and, you know, or or a concept then we started writing this script, and I was just following that path. So really Yeah. You know, in a lot of ways, I look back and see these patterns because the human mind is trained to see those patterns. Right? Yeah.

But really, I'm just walking this kind of predetermined path in some ways. Right? I'm surfing the collapse of various media platforms. Right? And just trying to keep my head above water, and really to me, that is the thrust of my personal story.

The things I make, the music, the the art, the the writing, all that stuff is kind of just incidental. That's me expressing myself as I go through this journey. I think, you know, what's funny you say about that is that it does come back to the idea of the absurd being relatively likable. Right? And in in a way, almost like endearing.

So, like, the more you put yourself out there, the more you talk about, like, all of this. At some point, someone's either gonna be like, no. That's for me or not. And they're gonna either question the morality of it or not, but they're also gonna, you know, decide whether or not it's endearing. And you in a way with Deli Boys were sort of you had the task of creating some endearment out of characters who are obviously not role models and who are obviously not scrupulous.

And is there a sort of a secret to finding especially from the writer's vantage point, is there a secret to finding the likable moments among the chaotic ones? Yeah. You know, I think a lot of that centers around the ignorant striving for good with very little information. Right? And I think that that is at the heart of these characters.

Now there is a version of the ignorant person who is malicious, right, and who is like, ah, like fuck anything that's different or whatever, right? But we like to think that in your soul as a human being, right, we all know very, very little. Right? And we're guided by our conscience, by our heart. Right?

And I think that we've seen a lot of characters where their conscience is super questionable in a similar context to Walter White, right? Or Right. Or whatever Yeah. Or what have you. The thing that draws you into those dramas is the moral questioning, you know, that's why the anti hero works there.

I don't think the anti hero can work in comedy the same way. I mean, it has, obviously. I think, you know, Danny McBride has built an entire career on that, you know, sort of like acerbic anti hero. But it doesn't work for me because to me, meanness is not funny. Right?

It can be funny in the context of these two brothers, but only because you know that they love each other so much that they can egg on each other infinitely. Right? And I think that that's something that speaks to the South Asianness of that relationship. We do have such deep bonds, right, that we can sort of come at each other in bigger ways, criticize each other. Right?

And yet we do that with with a freedom knowing that at the end of the day, nothing can break that bond. Right? And I think it's that flip side of it that allows these two brothers to to be problematic, right, in terms of the drugs, in terms of, how they treat the people around them, you know, their egos, all that stuff. Because when it really comes down to it, we believe they'll do the right thing. And when they don't do the right thing, that's a major plot.

Yeah. I mean, that that's the twist. Right? And that that's where you start gravitating towards even more I mean, you yearn as an audience member to, hey. I kinda wanna find out what's next here.

And I've read and heard you say this about the sort of South Asianness of it or or the cultural aspect of this where you talk about Deli Boys intentionally not trying to either rectify or justify culture. And I love that that whole idea. Was that sort of a mission statement or a temperature check that needed practice and even sort of needed reminding for other writers, the rest of the EP team, the the entire sort of anyone anyone who's a stakeholder on the project to just remind themselves of that. And then, by the way, is that a practice or a reminder that South Asian creators in Hollywood need to perhaps pay more attention to? Oh, yeah.

I I think that's a great question. You know, I feel like the idea of Muslim identity my whole life has been really monolithic, right? And I've been told that there is essentially only one approach to Islam, right, and that's being very, very devout and, you know, very disciplined in the physical practice of praying and fasting and doing all those things, right? But as I've grown older, right, and sort of gravitated away from religion at certain times and then come back to it at certain times. Right?

The things that have tied me back to it are things that I was told are haram. Psychedelic experiences. Right? Like, love, relationships, any of those things. Right?

Like, look. I'm married to a woman who I dated for years before that. Right? According to the books, you're not supposed to do that, but my love for her, her love for cats, which are, you know, a very venerated animal in Islam. She's the one who taught me all that.

She's the one who got me back in touch with it, and it was DMT that literally allowed me to see the reflections of god, of Allah. You know what I mean? That made me Muslim again that brought me back to it. And the thing that I realized and wanted to take more ownership of in recent years is that being a Muslim, there's so many of us. We all have to have different approaches.

And anyone who tells you this is not what Muslims do is stupid because there's billions of us. We all have different approaches. The thing that binds us, right, is the morality of our Muslim, of of our religion. Right? But we all have different approaches, and we're not supposed to have intermediaries between ourselves and and our higher power.

Right? So in that, I think a lot of people look would look at me, you know, would look at my lifestyle and the the work that I do and say this guy is not Muslim. But that person has no authority to say that. And I think that a lot of Muslims in the world feel this way and feel like, oh, well, you know, I because I don't pray enough or don't fast enough or whatever, like, I'm less of a Muslim. That's I don't think that's true at all.

I think it lives in your heart. And I want the social definition, the global definition of being a Muslim to be more open, to accept this stuff. We're not defined by the most conservative interpretation of our religion. And in fact, I would love for that to radiate out to to everything. Right?

Like, to be an American, you you don't have to be, anti immigrant. Right? You don't have to hate other countries in order to love your country more. Right? Like, you can be many different things.

I am many different things, and there is I would argue more of us that are many things than there are of us that are just one thing. Right? And but we've been led by the worst of us. We've been led by the worst mentality, right? And so I wanna open that up.

I wanna retake ownership of that. Like I am an American, I'm a Muslim, I'm a creative. Everybody has the right to be exactly what they are and not be judged for it. Well and, you know, I love what you said there about this idea that there's no there's no one way. There's definitely a a lot of universality to the specificity.

And I guess the question is is that do South Asian American creatives need to actually, do they need to do anything? I don't know. But is there is there maybe a more more motivation now that should be out there to actually, you know, absolutely diversify what stories are actually told? Because there isn't one version. Right?

And we talk at least I've talked with many, many other guests on the show about sort of, like, mirrors and windows. And the idea that, like, Deli Boys offers this great, specific, comedic mirror that centers around a family and a crime story. And in it's just an absurd sort of wild ride through this convenience store epic, if you will. Right? And that experience is is very, very much relatable for many.

But but for South Asian American storytellers in Hollywood particularly, what do you hope the mirror is that they see, you know, for themselves in a show like Deli Boys that then sort of translates to getting more of that out there? Either whether that could be the absurd. It could be the kinda likable Don Draper type of character. It could be anything. But for there not to be this platform where you're pitching these stories to someone who says, well, I got a I kind of got a weird Muslim story that we're doing, but I don't wanna take your story because it would take away from that.

And, you know, for us to get away from this idea that one pathway has to shove out the other. I think really what it comes down to is avoiding judgment. Yeah. I think that, you know, we all have stories to tell that are unique. Right?

It's society that categorizes my story and Moe's story and Rami's story into one thing. Why? Because we're all Muslim. The shows are completely different. Right?

Broach completely different topics. The tones are so different. Right? And they're all great shows, dare I say. Right?

But, like, we all have different interpretations, yet we are defined by being Muslim. I had Deliboys passed on because they were like, well, we're doing another Muslim show. So that slot is filled. And that Muslim show has nothing to do with anything when it comes to my thing. I just happen to have brown skinned characters who are Muslim.

Right? So it's like, I really think the most important thing for us to do as a community of brown skinned people all with roots in the same part of the world is to stop judging each other in those ways. Now we are making real headway in terms of getting people like us into the system, into the infrastructure. Right? So Onyx Collective, I think, is a great example of that.

Anil, our exec, you know, who's my homie and is a brown guy. That's my executive. Right? So it's like we have those opportunities. We have those spaces.

All we have to do is drop our stereotypes about each other. Pakistanis, Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, whatever, right? Because all it says about us is that we're insecure. When you judge another person who looks just like you and you know, we boast this in Deli boys with some levity because I feel so strongly about this that especially here in America. Look, I'm an American.

I've spent time in Pakistan, but I never lived in Pakistan. I I can't speak to the balance of social understanding there. But here in America, I can tell you that the people that I find community with are Pakistani and they're Indian and they're dark skinned people from other places and they're white people and they're East Asians. Right? But specifically within our group, we share so much in this world, in in this country.

It's ridiculous for us to have these divisions and yet they exist. We judge each other so hard without taking a step back and realizing that this is a post colonial mindset. We were forced into this. Right? And so, you know, when the great Chicky Lasagna, in episode three, I think, you know, he says, you guys hate each other even though you look exactly the same.

Right? I want that to hit. I want that to hit. Look at you and me in this frame right now, brother. We look like we're fucking related.

Look at our faces. We look very similar. Right? And so it's like, I want us to get back to that understanding of each other. And the politics of America and representation, all those divisions will they will be as firm as we allow them to be.

Right? We're the ones laying those bricks. Like, to me, the most important thing is to just let each other live, man. Yeah. You know, don't look at someone else and say, oh, no.

That's our culture. Actually, that's our culture. No. That dish is not Indian. It's Pakistani.

Guess what? There was this thing called partition. We are all mixed around all over this continent. Right? We do share the culture.

We don't have to draw those lines. And, yeah, I Yeah. I hope that this show I think it's also idealistic and maybe optimistic to a stupid degree to think that I can make jokes and heal wound that's, you know, 80 years old or whatever a century old. But you know what? I'm gonna fucking try.

Because if I have the platform and I can say something, this is what I wanna say. You're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation after a quick break with the creator of the show, Deli Boys, Abdullah Saeed. Stay tuned. Every story told is a lesson learned, and every lesson learned is a story waiting to be told.

I'm Abhay Dandekar, and I share conversations with global Indians and South Asians so everyone can say, trust me, I know what I'm doing. New episodes weekly wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hi. I'm Krish Ashok, author of Masala Lab, The Science of Indian Cooking, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Hi.

This is Madhur Dixit. Hi. This is Farhan Akhtar. Hi. This is Vidya Balan, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing.

Hi there. I'm Abhay Dandekar, and you're listening to Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing. Let's rejoin our conversation now with the creator of the show, Deli Boys, Abdullah Saeed. I've heard you talk about explosive turns when it comes to, you know, plot and surprises and things like that. In having conversations like this, where look.

Yes. We're if you can get away in a political or an apolitical world without judging somebody, you've now made a catalyst for a new relationship. Right? Yeah. Are the unexpected or the explosive turns is that kind of a proxy for, like, how you live your life?

Like, do you look in and you're, like, specifically looking for those. So because there might be a nugget out there without judgment that if you were just listen a little more carefully or just examine and analyze, that next explosive turn might be the one that sort of, like, offers a lot of richness for your journey. That's a really fascinating question, dude. So yeah. I mean, absolutely the hard turns are part of the vernacular of the show Yeah.

Just because I wanted to keep people reading the script. Right? The pilot. And and really that's where it came from. I I didn't look any deeper.

But now that you mentioned, honestly, it's kind of like occurring to me now. Yes. My life has been punctuated by very hard turns. Right? The sudden, you know, divorce of my parents that led to me moving to America.

Right? When I was 22, you know, I I was I was attacked by a mugger. It was, you know, like, almost killed. And and that was the thing that really made me look at my life very differently. Right?

It's I think the thing that made me believe in myself as a writer or allow myself to believe in myself as a writer. Right? And the strike, the my move to LA, all of these big moments, right, that suddenly subverted any prediction I would have had about how my life was going to go. That's how things have gone. And and I mean, like, I think that when you expect the unexpected in that way to a degree, right, without becoming paranoid, you start to look at life in a different way and you value it.

I do think that it's allowed me to appreciate my life. You know what I'm saying? Like Yeah. I'm I'm thankful for all those experiences even though some of them were so incredibly hard. And then, you know, of course, that just sort of bled into my work.

I think you just identified where that came from. Right? And I didn't even realize it before that that's where that stuff came from. I know these characters. I love these characters.

They're gentle and naive and soft, and then, like, you know, a wrecking ball just comes through their life Right. And changes them and forces them to reckon with, you know, these bigger questions. That's literally what's happened to me in my life and, you know, I yeah. I didn't realize it. So good call.

Well, I mean and and and, like, you just sort of navigate through these things, and it comes out in different ways in in your expression. I I it's funny. I talked to gratefully talked to to Tan France a couple of years ago. Oh, man. Oh my god.

Yeah. He's the best guy. Yeah. Enjoyed it so much. Right?

And it's there's something he he said that that really struck me when I asked him about how he builds and cultivates trust and what's the sort of secret sauce with that. And he said, you know, essentially that that it's pretty simple. Right? You surround yourself with people you love that are committed to a mission that you believe in that sort of speaks to the truth. Yeah.

And did that particular I mean, sounds pretty obvious, but Mhmm. Is is that something that sort of rings true for a very personal project like Deli Boys? And for that matter, you know, for the the projects that are that are next as well. Right? Is is that a mission that that that sort of an ethos that that rings true for you?

Yeah. And you know, Dan is so hard forward. He's so love forward. And we know that someone who is as martial law famous and successful as he is, like, really doesn't have to. Right?

You know what I mean? Like, he would be just as successful he wasn't, but he has that at his heart at his heart. And and, you know, I really do think that when he joined our cast, we were like, oh, yeah. This guy is totally on vibe for us. Right?

And, of course, like, that starts with myself and my fellow EPs, Nora Silver, Jenny Connor, and Michelle Nader, the show runner. We have we're all, like, sensitive artists. We have a loving relationship. Right? And it radiates out.

I think the thing we'd all agree on is that we would rather everybody take ownership and and enjoy themselves and, you know, really pour their hearts into it, not out of fear or desperation or because it's your job and you're expecting a paycheck or whatever. Right? But just because you love the thing and the people who have brought you in to work on it give you the freedom to express yourself. Right? So every single person, I mean, the production designer, Jesse Haddad, you know, our costume designer, Kaylee Brennaman, you know, like all these different departments, right, who totally took ownership and we were like, oh, I see that you have a vision for the way that Lucky dresses or the way that Raj dresses or whatever.

Right? And really allowing that to happen. I really do think that if everyone's enjoying themselves, that the product will be good. I learned that on Bon Appetit where we didn't have many resources, you know. We were like a like a pretty scrappy setup, but just having a good time, being like, look, there's cannabis everywhere.

Why would we, you know, be angry and upset? Right? Trying to maintain that as much as possible because it is a grueling work environment. Right? For anybody involved, it's a grueling work environment.

So in my mind, like, adding to that stress is not going to make the product any better. Right? Yeah. And also then as the creator of the show, right, there is this responsibility that falls on you to be, like, generous with your game that you've made. Right?

And really I see it as like I made a game board, I made these game pieces, and then me and my friends played on that board and filmed it. Right? And and and that's what this show is essentially. And so, you know, I I do think that it came from the top. Michelle is a very loving leader and boss, you know what I mean?

And and it shows like, you know, I've seen her in action on the set of shifting gears And she has that same lightness and inclusiveness that that we have on Deliboy. So I I'm just I feel very blessed that, you know, we got her as a showrunner because she really maintains that vibe, right? It's like our, you know, our army of writers and assistants, or whatever, there's a bunch of them that were on Deli Boys that are also on Shifting Gears and it's like all these familiar faces and there's love. Like I'm invested in the careers of our most junior writers all the way up to the venerable actors. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I'm I'm invested in Forna's success as much as I'm invested in, you know, our rating PA success. You know what I mean? I I really do want it for all of them. It's hard to be a human. It's hard to be a vulnerable human.

But if you can find that love even when you're beaten down by the physical grind of it, I think you can come out with with something beautiful. You know what I mean? And I I gotta say also the boys, man. Saga and Asif, they just create such a tone. Like, dude, when the the camera's on you essentially all day, right, you have to be the one to set that tone, and they are just they're so real.

They're just, like, such benches. You know what I mean? Like And that that comes through, right, in in the product. I love how you kinda capture every single stakeholder. It doesn't matter if you're the the largest star or it's your first day on the project.

You meet the the love is there, the compassion is there, and the mission is there. Right? Like, you know, make no mistake. Right? We're here.

It's a grind. There's a lot of work to do, and yet we're all part of it. And if if egos get in the way, if, you know, disagreements get in the way, that's gonna happen. But at the end, like, let's check all that stuff at the doors because we can make something that we're proud of and and that we love. Let me get you out of here on this one because you mentioned sort of this this concept of how that chemistry works.

Right? So, like, the chemistry of Sagar and Asif and and really sort of, like, how how that flows, you know, through this in a way that kinda chemistry among people both in front of the camera and behind the camera helps things to stay evergreen. And I'm so curious about, you know, this concept of longevity and staying evergreen, especially in a very, very tight business where attention spans are are so short. And that that's really tough to stay evergreen. So so what do you think gives a project like Deli Boys or for that matter, any of your future projects that you might work on?

What do you think gives them longevity and even relevance particularly related back to you personally? Oh, yeah. So, you know, I really think what it comes down to is simplicity in a lot of ways. So now whether you're talking about the way you're pitching a show. Right?

Now if I if you say, okay. Tell me what your show is about, and I say a whole paragraph of stuff. Right? I'm gonna lose you at some point. But if I can chop everything away, simplify, simplify, simplify, and get to one sentence, right, or three words even, and it still expresses the heart of the show, right, then you've got something.

And I think that's a good litmus test. Right? And, you know, on the emotional level, when you look at these characters, right, it's very simple. The relationship is very simple. Lucky made a promise to Baba, I'll take care of your boys.

That's driving the entire show essentially. Right? Right. And and, you know, and and the boys have an unspoken bond. You know, one of them can say I love you, the other one can't.

But they love each other and that's it's as simple as that. Nir is the head, Raj is the heart. Right? Like, there's all these very simple rules, just very human rules underneath it all. And whether we're talking about, you know, a large arc or a single episode arc or a single scene, a single joke sometimes.

Right? If you can get down to those brass tacks and make a commentary on a simple thing, like I said before, like, Pakistanis and Indians don't understand each other. Right? And you see it from this outside perspective, and then you sort of draw it out and you're like, okay. Here's these two families.

Right? It's like a Pakistani family and Indian family. They literally literally cast the racist out of the room. They say, get out of here so we could talk. And then we end up setting up a, a a marriage, Rishta, between a Muslim and a Hindu.

Yeah. So it is like to me, simplicity is at the heart of all of this. I think if if you can boil things down to that simplicity, then that I think you've got something. That's what I do bring to my other projects. Right?

Like, the things I learned from Deli Boys are address that directly. So in every project I do and I I felt this for a long time. If you can boil it down to three words and make someone go like, oh, that's interesting. Now you've got something. Right?

Nice. I'm a big sci fi fan, and I feel like the best sci fi has so many bells and whistles, but when you get down to the heart of it, there's one simple concept that we're exploring. Right? So, yeah, that's, that's my vibe. I hope I can keep that going.

Well, simplicity and keeping human rules in mind, I know is attracting more and more people to you and all your work. Abdullah, what what a great treat this has been. Really appreciated you joining us and hope we can visit with you again down the road. Thanks so much, man. Anytime.

I'm here. Thanks so much, Abdullah. And please check out Deli Boys on Hulu starring Asif Ali, Saagar Shaikh, Alfie Fuller, and Poorna Jagannathan. Once again, if you're enjoying these, please take a moment to write a kind review and follow along on social media and share this with someone you know. Till next time, I'm Abhay Dandekar