Michelle Nader and Jenni Konner Know That ‘Deli Boys’ Matters Because Stars Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh Make It So

IndieWire Honors: Ali and Shaikh will receive the Breakthrough Award at this season's TV-centric event on June 4.

On June 4, the IndieWire Honors Spring 2026 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best television series. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the creators, artisans, and performers behind shows well worth toasting. In the days leading up to the Los Angeles event, IndieWire is showcasing their work with new interviews and tributes from their peers.

Ahead, showrunner and producer Michelle Nader and Jenni Konner tell IndieWire about the unique skills and wild charm of stars Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh, this season’s recipients of our Breakthrough Award.

“Deli Boys,” on- and off-screen, has been about overcoming impossible, ridiculous odds. The show survived COVID, a handful of studio mergers, and a writers’ strike. What do you need to make multiple seasons of a silly fish out of water comedy despite all that? You need magic. Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh are magic.

These are actors who are so funny that you find yourself chuckling weeks later, just remembering the way they delivered a line. And they’re actors who are so good, so fully alive in every moment, that you forget there were ever cameras in the room.

As Mir Dar — the brother who holds the family together while pretending it costs him nothing — Asif brings specific, beautiful layers to the straight man role. His physicality is somehow both exacting and fluid at the same time. He has perfect comedic timing, while also delivering such rich emotional nuance that you find yourself warming to him over and over again.

Saagar took Raj Dar — the casual mushroom-taking, never-had-a-job, orgy-loving, spoiled son of a rich man — and made him the heart of the show. He made the series feel tender simply by being in it. Saagar has the truly rare ability to stand out in every scene while also making everyone around him shine. Generous and confident, he can take very little and turn it into the most memorable moment.

The show lives and dies on these brothers, their relationship with each other, and, of course, their indomitable Auntie Lucky, played to perfection by Poorna Jagannathan. Saagar and Asif’s dynamic brings all of it to life with the lived-in texture of real relationships — full of shorthand, buried wounds, and impenetrable loyalty.

That passion continues off screen. You will never find better people at the top of a call sheet. This experience matters deeply to them — every single part of it.

This show matters. It matters because it’s stupidly funny in a dark time. It matters because we love it, and because we love the passionate, thoughtful, wonderful people we get to make it with. And it matters because these two magical guys showed up and made these characters matter.

“Deli Boys” Season 2 is now streaming on Hulu.