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.
Comments