Top of the Line: What’s Your Take?

Kareem Rahma tells IndieWire about shooting in the wilds of NYC, and other stories from the Craft Team.

Hi y’all. Welcome back to Top of the Line, IndieWire’s roundup of Craft stories. I won’t trouble you with a pun about how summer has heated up what the Craft Team is up to because we simply don’t have time for that. But whether you’re looking for closure on the “Hacks” series finale or “The Boys” series finale, we have you covered. We’ve gotten lost in the “Backrooms” and marooned ourselves on “Cape Fear.” We’ve profiled some “Very Important People” and some very important 3D printers. Whether you’re looking to hang out with TV‘s most beloved Night Shift or you have even spicier takes on “Euphoria” Season 3 than our own Jim Hemphill, there’s been a lot of cool crafty stuff on IndieWire written just for you.

But today I am here to talk about “Subway Takes,” Kareem Rahma’s YouTube series that profiles the takes of both regular riders and more famous celebrities sneaking onto public transit for their takes on everything from romance to AI to the social contract around potlucks. Rahma’s one of a number of Internet creators running local, as it were, to more traditional talk and chat show formats, with increasingly fun and — most importantly — viral results. But it’s also a good blueprint for how to shoot something quickly, with a low profile, in fluid conditions.

“Subway Takes” looks pretty simple: Just a couple camera setups around Rahma and whoever his guest is, seated on a train. But I was curious how the show actually gets made, fully in public, and how Rahma’s finessed the hooky, simple format over the years he’s been at it and expanded “Subway Takes” to other transit systems in London, Chicago, Berlin, and beyond.

Between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on trains running between Manhattan and Brooklyn is the main answer to the OG NYC “Subway Takes” schedule. The team — which used to be just Rahma and two friends and has now doubled its (still tiny) footprint to include a rotation of camera crew and producers — wants to provide the least amount of disruption to regular riders. The low shooting footprint is important — when big celebrities, they can have big teams of their own, and that very quickly can fill up a train car — as is waiting on cars that are mostly empty so that the shoot can give regular riders as much space as possible. As a result, Rahma hasn’t encountered anyone upset that he and his team are shooting.

“If someone wants to chime in, they chime in, and I’m happy to have them on the show. There’s not been anyone who’s trying to cause a ruckus or create chaos,” Rahma said. “Unless you’re, like, Cate Blanchett or J. Lo, sometimes you’re just mixed with other people. So I’ll shoot like four friends and then, like, Eric André, who’s technically a celebrity but is also a peer and is also normal, so he just comes on with everyone else. We don’t make any special accommodations.” Indeed, part of the draw of watching “Subway Takes” is that anyone and everyone could be on “Subway Takes.”

Whoever the guest is, the jaunt over the East River also provides Rahma with more uninterrupted time to dig into their takes. As with most things, it’s impossible to engineer to go viral. Rahma just thought interviewing people on the subway would be a good idea. Or at least, an interesting experiment to try and potentially fail.

“I’m literally not working in Hollywood, so let me go do this thing that will probably fail,” Rahma told IndieWire. “I actually thought it was a really dumb idea because I’ve had so many of those that I was like, ‘What are the odds that this one’s good?'”

But the odds were in “Subway Takes” favor. This is in no small part due, Rahma believes, to the deft editing that balances just on the edge of the platform, so to speak, to distill ten or fifteen minutes of conversation down into a reel or a short-length amount of video. “Our editors make something that seems so simple feel really dynamic, really engaging, really fast-paced, and at the same time not cheap and not slop,” Rahma said.

Rahma wants the show to be the most sophisticated series about the stupidiest subways precisely as a way to stand out from and to combat so much of the slop content we’re all subjected to in the Year of Our Lord 2026. “I think in a world where everything feels fake, and sometimes is fake with AI and such, it’s a breath of fresh air to see something so normal, and just like real life. You turn on the news, and those people are lying to you. You turn on your social media apps, and those people are lying to you. You watch a video, and you find out it’s fake and they’re lying to you. And then you see ‘Subway Takes’ and you’re like, ‘OK, those people are not lying to me.’ There’s this stupid, real, funny conversation that’s also smart at the same time,” Rahma said.

The show gets to be that way in part because of how Rahma’s grown as an interviewer over shooting friends, celebrities, and random people with opinions over and over and over again. He doesn’t try to overthink his approach to setup, prep, or filming, just tries to be a friend to the guest and set them at their ease. But he’s now had a few interviews where he’s realized that it can be a very different level of challenge.

“There was an episode with Bill Burr that was really hard for me,” Rahma said. “This guy just totally destroyed me in the first 15 seconds; made me feel like I was bad at my job. And then I got it back on track after like 10 or 15 minutes, and by the end of it, he was chummy and happy and complimented me on my skills. So that was one of the first times where I was like, ‘OK, maybe I do have a certain skill that has been developing.”

As for which subways Rahma wants to sneak a sophisticated show about stupid takes next? “ I’m really interested in exploring a Japan season, but I know that their train etiquette is a lot different than New Yorkers’ train etiquette, so I haven’t figured it out. I think South Korea, Seoul, would also be really cool. I want to make it out to Asia,” Rahma said.

Bullet Train Takes are perhaps coming soon,  but in the meantime, you can check out “Subway Takes” on YouTube. And we’ll be back with another Craft Newsletter next week.