There is a moment, unscripted, in Hulu’s “Deli Boys,” in which Poorna Jagannathan and Tan France start cursing at each other in Urdu.
The two are close friends (and old friends), but France’s acting debut in the absurd comedy series put him through the ringer, until the duo were improvising the most vile things they could say to each other. There’s kutti (bitch), haramzaade (bastard), bhenchod (sister fucker) — all flowing through a meticulously choreographed group fight taking place in a hotel room.
“It really made us think, when we’re at our most primal, these two characters, we go to the place that we are most familiar with where you just speak your own language,” Jagannathan told IndieWire during a recent interview.
That Episode 6 fight is Jagannathan’s favorite scene, the one in which bumbling brothers Raj (Saagar Shaikh) and Mir (Asif Ali) try to save her character Lucky from British crime lords out for revenge (France and Feraz Ozel Ellahie). After the boys’ father (Iqbal Theba) dies in Episode 1, Lucky becomes their tough-but-fair guide through the criminal empire they inherit.
“For me, that episode is the heart of the series,” Jagannathan said. “It’s the most violent of them and the most absurd of them and the most emotional of them … as absurd and ridiculous as it is, it’s a story about family, and story about grief, losing your dad, and the impact that has. You get to go really deep into Raj’s grief, into Mir’s grief, and Lucky’s grief at that moment.”
She also got to beat the crap out of France and Ellahie, something that started to feel real only when stunt coordinator Chris Nolte began sending out pre-vis videos. “He makes it really violent, but he also thinks about how to make it ridiculous and funny and a little absurd at the same time, which is so the tone of the comedy,” she said.
Jagannathan has done stunts before, enough to be comfortable stepping out or subbing in as needed, and enough to know you “have to get right once” (France assumed he’d do his own stunts and “didn’t let go of that”).
“There’s a scene where I have to stamp his hand, and he throws up the gun and I catch it,” Jagannathan recalled. “We did that a good 45 times, and I caught it — kind of — only once. I put no pressure on myself, it’s gonna happen, because you’re just playing the odds. … We didn’t want to lose it, because it’s so ridiculously funny and absurd and just added that great element to the fight, but it took a minute.”
Jagannathan likened the fight choreography to dancing, and took a similar approach in learning and rehearsing the movement with Nolte and eventually with her scene partners. On set (“Thank God it was a set”), that freed the actors up for things like the Urdu cursing and other bits of improv, like a last-minute kick to the balls or Lucky removing her handcuffs without a key (they were already loose on Jagannathan’s wrists).
Since “Deli Boys” premiered in March, audiences have not only devoured the series, but picked up on the clear camaraderie between Jagannathan, Shaikh, Ali, and the rest of the cast.
“The amazing thing about ‘Deli Boys’ is we all got to set, and we all put a red nose on, and then we went to work,” she said. “You can’t fake that. In between takes we were listening to random Bollywood music and we’d all just get up and dance … and then we sit back down and then do the scene. It’s a very, very comfortable environment for an actor like me. There’s no pressure, no feeling like there’s only one way to do it, so it really lets you be even more creative than than you thought you could be. So even in that fight scene, it was just like few more people to clown with that day.”
The episode was helmed by Andrew Ahn, whom Jagannathan praised for mapping everything out (“I love structure”) — but always being open to options. “He’d see something that we were doing differently, or something that worked better, or something that didn’t work, and he was like, ‘OK, let’s grab that. Let’s use this.’ There was a flexibility within the scene, which is such a marker of a great director.”
Jagannathan also developed a shorthand with costume designer Cailey Breneman, who “knows two things about me: I like to be comfortable, and I’m always cold.” She dressed the actor in a breathable white button-down and pants, and depending on the coverage, Jagannathan would swap out Lucky’s heeled boots for her heel-less favorite footwear brand, Aera.
And as Jagannathan mentioned, in true “Deli Boys” fashion there’s an emotional North Star between the violence and the hallucination and the foul language. While Raj has visions of his father in the present, flashbacks reveal how young Baba (Parth Kichloo) first met young Lucky (Gabrielle Amritt).
“The fact that my character gets a flashback is such a privilege,” Jagannathan said, citing “Never Have I Ever” as the only other exception. “I, as an actor, never get a backstory. It’s just one of those things, right? As an actor of color, as a South Asian woman — I often say I’m so used to being at the back of the story versus having a backstory. It’s two very different scenarios.”
The scenes reveal that Baba also provided Lucky with a sense of support and security, that behind her bravado she too must navigate an uncertain world without him.
“Episode 6 is where Lucky shows who she is to the boys,” she added. “Just like Baba hid who he was, Lucky hides herself as much as she can to protect the boys, so this is the first time where the audience sees how physically capable Lucky is, and how absolutely fierce of a character she is. Within all that comedy and all that ridiculousness, you see why she should be the next in line.”
“Deli Boys” is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
