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PORTSIDE CULTURE

POORNA JAGANNATHAN ON WHY HULU’S SWEET, SINISTER DELI BOYS IS A
DREAM GIG  
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Saloni Gajjar
March 12, 2025
AV Club
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_ Created by Abdullah Saeed, Deli Boys also centers South Asians in a
genre that they’re rarely featured in _

, Photo: James Washington/Hulu

 

It took more than two decades for Poorna Jagannathan
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score a TV role that brought her to the forefront like _Never Have I
Ever_
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After four seasons of playing a stern, sincere mom in Mindy Kaling and
Lang Fisher’s Netflix series, she’s found her next calling—and
the actor is glad the roles are nothing alike. Jagannathan kills it
in Hulu’s _Deli Boys_
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unapologetic and sarcastic mafia boss. In the comedic thriller, after
losing her mentor, Lucky teams up with his two sons (played by Saagar
Shaikh and Asif Ali) to maintain a grasp on the family’s
drug-smuggling business. 

Created by Abdullah Saeed, _Deli Boys_ also centers South Asians in
a genre that they’re rarely featured in, which is another reason
Jagannathan was drawn to the show. Plus, she didn’t want to pass up
the chance to do more outright comedy as nerve-wracking as that was
for her. _The A.V. Club _spoke to the actor about watching _Real
Housewives _to get into Lucky’s mindset, flexing her improv
muscles, and what to expect from HBO’s _Lanterns_
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THE A.V. CLUB: YOU’VE GOTTEN TO DO A RANGE OF ROLES ON TV OVER THE
YEARS. DO YOU HAVE A CRITERIA FOR THE CHARACTERS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR?

POORNA JAGANNATHAN: Not so much characters but very much the writing.
I wasn’t sure who Lucky was going to be in _Deli Boys_ or what her
arc was going to be when I read the pilot, for example. I could see
she’s hilarious in the few scenes she’s in, but it’s hard to
gauge the character so early. Still, I knew I wanted to be part of
that writing and that world. I could never imagine a character like
Lucky would exist for me to play or just that we are at a stage where
she can exist. It’s mind-blowing.

AVC: WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE WRITING THAT STOOD OUT? 

PJ:  _Deli Boys_ feels so up my alley in terms of what I like to
see on TV. It’s a genre that entertains me in life. It puts
something sweet, nurturing, intimate, and lovely in one scene and then
something violent right after that. The two exist side by side. The
more you lean into that sweet aspect, the more the other will just
stand out. I love writing that puts the expected and the unexpected
next to each other. As the scripts go on, Lucky is given a backstory
whereas I am used to playing characters that are at the back of the
story. Most of the time these characters don’t get any time, space,
exposition, or arc to grow. I’m used to that. The roles I got in
shows like _Big Little Lies _and _Never Have I Ever _are
exceptions along the way. 

I love how Lucky is written as sweet yet sinister, ambitious, and
wildly powerful. She’s also the only woman in the room almost all
the time. The writing can also get intense, like in episode six, when
Lucky is kidnapped by a character played by Tan France. There’s a
moment where she displays extraordinary grief about losing her mentor,
Baba [Iqbal Theba]. Lucky can go into that emotional space and cry
about it with his sons, Raj and Mir, and then knife people two seconds
later. I love all of that. 

AVC: YOU HAVEN’T DONE AS MANY COMEDIC ROLES. DID YOU HAVE ANY
SPECIFIC INFLUENCES FOR _DELI BOYS_? 

PJ: This is going to sound absurd but, without missing a day, I
watched _The Real Housewives Of Orange County_. Every single night of
filming, I watched it. Usually when I’m filming something, I look
for a documentary that will help me because sometimes, as an actor,
you forget to ground the performance in reality, so documentaries help
me do that. I was trying to look [at] different things for _Deli
Boys_. I watched _The Sopranos_, too. And weirdly,
watching _Housewives _helped the most. 

Actually, one time before we started filming, I was out with my mom in
Toronto. We were having dinner at a Persian restaurant, and there was
a Parsi lady with her two sons eating next to us. One of the sons had
watched _Never Have I Ever_, so we struck up a conversation. Her sons
were grown-ass men in their late twenties, by the way. And this woman
was very put together, fashionable, lovely, and clearly a great mom.
Then she just wiped their mouth gently after their food was done. And
just like, I felt like I found my Lucky. Between her
and _Housewives_, I was set. 

AVC: WHAT ABOUT ONCE YOU GOT TO SET? WAS THERE A LINE OR A COSTUME
THAT HELPED SNAP EXACTLY WHO LUCKY WAS IN PLACE FOR YOU? 

PJ: Yes, I have a distinct memory of it. Obviously, I knew _Deli
Boys _was a comedy, but I hadn’t done it to this degree. I didn’t
even think of the physical comedy part of it. I kept thinking it’ll
be a case where I could play it mostly straight. And then someone, I
forget if it was [producer] Vali Chandrasekaran, our director Nisha
Ganatra, or creator Abdullah Saeed, but one of them said we are trying
to go for that _Righteous Gemstones_
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If anyone hasn’t seen it, it’s purely ridiculous and great. Once
they said that to me, it started unlocking a lot. There’s a scene in
the premiere when the DarCo offices get raided by the FBI. It’s a
simple scene, but within that, I then tried to do something like
tearing up all the documents and yelling at the assistant to eat the
paper, and he does do it. We were allowed and encouraged to do stuff
like that. It opened the floodgates for us to come to set and be more
ridiculous than we were the day before.  

There’s another scene in the pilot when Lucky is comforting Raj and
Mir after they’ve lost their dad, and they ask her if she’ll take
care of them now. Hands down it’s the funniest scene any of us have
ever shot. We couldn’t get through it. Asif and Saagar play dumb
fucks on the show, but they’re so smart in real life. And it’s
such a bonding experience when everyone is laughing together. We were
always trying to one up each other with the humor. It was like a bunch
of clowns joining the circus and being rowdy. It’s also the kind of
chemistry and relationship we share off the screen and that includes
our other co-stars Brian Ahmed and Alfie Fuller, too.  

AVC: IT SOUNDS LIKE A FUN AND FREEING ENVIRONMENT TO WORK IN. 

PJ: Yes, exactly, it was very freeing. It made room for us to
improvise. Some of the improv made it in. Like in this one scene,
Lucky is telling Raj to pick up a gun from the credenza. Saagar was
doing the line reading and very earnestly asked, not as Raj but as
himself, “What’s a credenza?” People just cracked up, and that
ended up in the show. 

AVC: SINCE YOU’RE RELATIVELY NEW TO THE GENRE, WHAT’S SOMETHING
UNEXPECTED YOU LEARNED? 

PJ: If I had been told from the beginning about the physical comedy,
I might’ve been more intimidated. I grew up watching British comedy
shows so that’s what I like and understand more than American
sitcoms. Those I do not get as much. So even with _Never Have I
Ever_, it was intimidating to enter that world and carry the tone for
multiple seasons. When I wrapped _NHIE_, I’m trying to remember
when we finished, but I got the _Deli Boys_ script like a month
later. I wasn’t ready to be in another TV show yet. I felt exhausted
and spent. Then the idea of being part of another South Asian project
made me wonder if I should do it or not. There’s always this
pressure as an actor to go mainstream, and you and I both know what
mainstream is usually code for. _Deli Boys _was also going to shoot
in Chicago partly during the winter, which is not my vibe at all
[_laughs_]. But then I read the script and found it irresistible. I
felt that way when I read _Lanterns _as well. When I started acting,
people would always ask me what dream roles I wanted and I never
imagined a place where these types of shows would come to me. 

AVC: SPEAKING OF HBO’S _LANTERNS_, THE SHOW HAS JUST GONE INTO
PRODUCTION. WHAT CAN YOU SHARE ABOUT BEING PART OF THIS DC SUPERHERO
SERIES? 

PJ: Not much just yet. I can say it has all the elements of _Green
Lantern_. It’s got everything that DC Comics is known and beloved
for. But every character is written with an aspect of hero and villain
intertwined that makes everything so intense and grounded. It feels
like my world, and I say that as someone who has never picked up a
comic book in my entire life. There are references in the script to a
place called Oa. That’s what it says, and at first I thought to
myself, “Okay, this is a writer who loves vowels or something.” I
had no idea it’s an established part of a planet. So it’s not
something I’m familiar with but I’ve been excited to learn about.
For other people like me who might not be as familiar, that audience
will still relate to the show and the characters deeply. 

* deli boys
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* Hulu
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* south Asian representation
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