Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh say “Deli Boys” shifted them from constant typecasting and rejection into steady work—and now they’re set to accept the Breakthrough Award at IndieWire Honors on June 4 in Los Angeles. Season 2 arrived on Hulu on May 28.
By the time Saagar Shaikh heard about “Deli Boys,” the auditions coming his way were already a familiar kind of wrong.
He was represented by an agency that would consistently send him for ill-fitting roles. including a “45-year-old father of three with an accent” even though Shaikh is in his late thirties and doesn’t have an accent. At that point. the support was coming with a side of disbelief—until the script for the gritty. comedic crime series landed in his lap.
Shaikh instantly loved it: a sharp story about a pair of pampered Pakistani-American heirs to a deli conglomerate who discover that, after their father’s death, their money largely came from a secret drug empire operating behind the scenes.
Deli Boys Asif Ali Saagar Shaikh IndieWire Honors Breakthrough Award Hulu Season 2 Pakistani-American South Asian cast Mir and Raj Poorna Jagannathan