March 03, 2025

In new Hulu comedy 'Deli Boys,' a South Philly corner store is the cover for the family drug business

The series, which debuts Thursday, was created by Temple alum Abdullah Saeed with showrunner Michelle Nader, who grew up in South Philly.

By Kristin Hunt
PhillyVoice Staff

Provided image/Hulu/Onyx

'Deli Boys' follows the leaders of a drug ring in Philadelphia who are using corner stores as a front. The Hulu series stars, from left to right, Saagar Shaikh, Asif Ali and Poorna Jagannathan.

Raj and Mir Dar lead cushy, uncomplicated lives at the start of "Deli Boys," the new Hulu comedy debuting Thursday. But their bubble bursts when a family tragedy strikes, revealing the secret source of the family wealth.

It's not, as the brothers had believed, a convenience store empire that spans the wider Philadelphia area. It's the drugs that have been moving through those shops the whole time. When the FBI seizes the luxe Dar homes and all but one of their delis, Raj and Mir inherit a messy, mostly illegal family business – and it's up to them to salvage it.

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The setting of "Deli Boys" was no accident. Series creator Abdullah Saeed lived in the city for eight years as a Temple student and later, a journalist for Philadelphia Weekly. Though he left long ago, he saw the show as a way to return.

"It's always had a warm place in my heart," he said. "I wanted to live there, fantastically, as I wrote the show."

Saeed enlisted "the most Philly showrunner" to help him in this mission. Michelle Nader grew up in South Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania before landing top jobs on sitcoms like "Shifting Gears," "Dollface" and "Two Broke Girls." She also starred in a memorable commercial for Geno's Steaks.

"I'm not from the rich side of Philly," Nader said. "I'm from South Philly, so the sort of underbelly of Philly is my world. I think we were both attracted to that, what that looked like behind the doors of the deli, what's really going on. I think Philly has that mystery to it."

With their combined forces, Nader and Saeed suffused "Deli Boys" with niche references and jokes. Raj, a free-spirited party boy, jokes about doing "more rails than SEPTA." An FBI agent suspects the Dars are still running drugs when she buys an extremely expired Tastykake at their deli. During the fifth episode, when the brothers attend a Super Bowl party at a mobster associate's home, they stumble into a Philadelphia cave of wonders containing the first cheesesteak (petrified), Black Thought's lunch box and a golden bust of Frank Rizzo.

Creating that "sense of the place," as Nader put it, was extra important since the show didn't actually shoot in Philadelphia. All 10 episodes were filmed in Chicago. Still, the show takes pains to shout out or re-create specific neighborhoods. The brothers' last remaining deli (and de facto home/office) is clearly set in South Philadelphia's Grays Ferry neighborhood, a locale inspired by Saeed's college career.

"I went to a party when I was at Temple, some friends had moved into a house in South Philly," he remembered. "We went down there and it was a very dilapidated and dangerous neighborhood. We were like, are you sure you guys wanna live here? Somebody then told me about ... Gray's Ferry, the Forgotten Bottom ... that name always stayed with me. It felt like a place where you could have a (business that's a) front and no one would notice."

Saeed's past life as a journalist also informed the show. He covered the drug trade extensively at Vice and other outlets, where he often heard interesting but unverified stories he couldn't print. Those turned into a running list of details – or "loose boys," as he dubbed them – to weave into the series. Some of them were rumored means of smuggling stashes. The Dar brothers sneak theirs by the feds in jars of achar, a pungent, pickled South Asian dish.

The show's stars are perhaps best known for their work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Asif Ali ("WandaVision," "Agatha All Along") plays Mir, while Saagar Shaikh ("Ms. Marvel," "The Marvels") is Raj. The supporting cast includes Poorna Jagannathan and Brian George as the empire's feuding lieutenants and Iqbal Theba as the beloved but secretive patriarch Baba. Saeed's wife, Alexandra Ruddy, plays the determined FBI agent on the brothers' tail; comedian Tim Baltz is her pompous boss who won't stop bragging about infiltrating the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Tan France also makes his acting debut as a rival gang leader.

Through these wacky characters and over-the-top situations – the show opens with a mostly naked man fleeing the deli with a bag over his head – Saeed and Nader hope to represent the eccentric, confrontational city they have both called home.

"I feel like people externalize their emotions more in a city like Philly," Saeed said. "New York is a lot of people in their little bubble just existing. But Philly still has that old school communalism, especially South Philly, where people are interacting with strangers on the street and there's not as many people. So you're sort of forced to confront the ones that are in front of you. There's no other place like that."