Poorna Jagannathan plays crime boss Lucky Auntie in the Hulu comedy series Deli Boys — a mix of Tony Soprano and The Real Housewives of Orange County, as Jagannathan describes her — a role that typically is written for a male to portray.
At Deadline’s Contenders TV event on Sunday afternoon, she revealed that series creator Abdullah Saeed had written her character as a male but was encouraged to go in a different direction thanks to some encouragement from Geena Davis.
“Lucky Auntie was written as a guy, as was another character called Agent Mercer,” shared Jagannathan. “Abdullah, the writer, went to a Geena Davis talk, and she basically was like, ‘Look at your script — if you could turn two men into women and it works, do it.’ So that night, he went back, and it became Lucky Auntie instead of Lucky Uncle, and Agent Mercer became a woman as well.”
She added: “What I love about this role is that Lucky has masculinity to her and a fieriness and a physicalness that I’ve never been able to play. It’s definitely not a role you’ve ever seen a South Asian woman play; you don’t see women play these types of roles. But she is stabbing someone with her left hand and shooting someone else with her right while taking somebody’s eye out with her heel. It’s on all possible fronts.”
Her co-star and fellow panelist Asif Ali pointed out that while Jagannathan does play at a badass who is not afraid to lean into her male energy, she also brought a softness to the character. “What Poorna does that’s so great, having a character that is so badass and hardcore, but she also brought — since she’s playing an auntie — the other side, which is tender and soft.”
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Jagannathan, as a South Asian mother, admits that without making any sweeping stereotypes, they infantilize the male children in the family. So that’s an element of Lucky Auntie, as well, with her nephews Mir Dar (Asif) and his brother Raj, played by Saagar Shaikh, who also was part of the panel.
“Lucky does that with these two,” she said. “She wipes food off their mouth and blood off their mouth; whatever needs to be wiped off, she will do it. She will keep feeding them even though she has to shoot like 10 people.
All 10 episodes of the series are available to stream via Hulu.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
