An Interview with Asif Ali & Saagar Shaikh from ‘Deli Boys’

Saagar Shaikh and Asif Ali as Raj Dar and Mir Dar in ‘Deli Boys’. (Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Sisson/Disney/Hulu.)

Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh are a pair of talented actors that have appeared in some big franchises over the year, such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Currently, they start as Mir and Raj Dar in the new Hulu series, Deli Boys, and we had the honor of speaking with both of them regarding this magnificent new show.
 
John Betancourt: I would love to start by getting to know, how you as actors made this all feel so real, since you both act as though you are family.
 
Asif Ali: A lot of it is, you know, like, chance of, you know, you get all this group of people together, and you just hope that they have chemistry. And I think that, you know, we got very lucky, and that we actually get along with each other. But, you know, Saagar is a naturally, extremely outgoing person. So, he was like, taking the reins of, like, “Let’s go. Let's go play ping pong. Let's go do karaoke. Let's go just hang out.” You know, we do rehearsals and stuff and, and I think it was a nice surprise for us to find out that we had so much in common, yeah.
 
Saagar Shaikh: And Asif had previously lived in Chicago, like, during college, and so he kind of knew all the good restaurants and the good places to go. So, I would just ask him, like, “Hey, where can we do this?” He’d be like, “Come on, let's go and, like, we'd go do it. And, and it was a great time. We just had this, like organic, you know…
 
Asif Ali: Vibe.
 
Saagar Shaikh: Yeah, I was gonna say organic chemistry, but that sounded too --
 
Asif Ali: Educational like?
 
Saagar Shaikh: Yeah, yeah.
 
John Betancourt: Oh man, and we’re even getting that dynamic in this interview, because there you are finishing each other sentences. (Laughter from everyone.) So, yeah, obviously this is a this is a great comedy. It's refreshing. It's original. It's not like anything else on television right now. I’m curious what it means to each of you be part of a show that is so refreshing and original.
 
Saagar Shaikh: I mean, I think I can speak for the both of us when I'm like… it means the world. I don't think either of us ever imagined, there was a possibility that we can lead a show together, especially a show you know, in the vein of, you know, as funny as The Righteous Gemstones, as you know, gangster as The Sopranos. And it's kind of, it's kind of got all the best elements of the best shows out there.
 
Asif Ali: Yeah, it kind of feels like being on a show where you're like, “Wouldn't it be cool? But it'll never happen.” And then now we're in it, which is so amazing, and that speaks to what you're saying, of like, you know, I've never seen a show like this. You've never seen a show like this. So to be on a show that we have never seen before, that there's no prototype that we're kind of copying in that way, just like a great one, and then for people like us to be the forefront of a story like this, is such a such a special thing, and it's something that's not lost on us, because we would constantly, you know, as actors and stuff, you know, we're always just the only person, like, I was the only one on WandaVision. He was -- you know what I mean, like, it, or you were on, Ms. Marvel.
 
But like, I found a lot of my career being like, the only one guy on things, and, you know, a lot of times they pit us against each other, you know, just in general, like, because there's only one job, and so to be on a show where it's like… it's crazy. It's action, mob, it's drugs, and it's all of these people, and then there's other people. There's a Vietnamese mob, there's a Peruvian mob, there's an Italian Mob, there's Indian, Pakistani. It just felt like, wow, this is a special thing, and we gotta, we gotta make sure that we give 200% because this is not normal.
 
Saagar Shaikh: Totally, yeah. And we were so, like, you know, tunnel vision, so focused, hyper fixated, on making this show the best it could possibly be. And we, you know, did 10 episodes, and we had three months to do it, and everybody gave it 150% of what they had, and, you know, we're just really blessed to have been working with all the great people that we did and that everybody was so passionate about the project. And it turned out the way it did.
 
John Betancourt: The last question that I have for both of you today, if you had to describe Deli Boys in a single word, what would that word be?
 
Asif Ali: Crazy.
 
Saagar Shaikh: Nuts.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.