18 to 35 co-creator talks filming in London and bringing diverse comedies to Canadian TVs
The Reel Asian International Film Festival returns for its 29th year, bringing Asian filmmakers and enthusiasts together to celebrate the stories that exist both in the Asian-Canadian diaspora and the many countries from which they hail.
Although the festival usually focuses on the big screen, there’s plenty of room to celebrate the achievements of Asian-Canadian creatives on the small screen as well. One such creative is Rahul Chaturvedi, director and co-creator of Bell Fibe TV1’s 18 to 35, a workplace sitcom following Misha Patel (played by Natalia Gracious) a young Indian-Canadian woman as she struggles to run a youth hostel in London, Ontario. The show employs a crew full of Londoners and showcases different aspects of life in the Forest City.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Rahul Chaturvedi on how the London-set series came to be and the importance of bringing Asian stories to Canadian TV screens.
Though Chaturvedi has achieved much in the Canadian television space, writing and directing for CBC’s Run the Burbs and Crave’s Late Bloomer, he actually hails from a tech background, with more than 10 years of experience as a computer programmer. This mid-life change inspires a lot of 18 to 35, honing in on the age range where young adults try to figure out what exactly life is all about.
Emmanuel Akanbi: Tell me a bit about why you chose to bring this particular workplace sitcom to life?
Rahul Chaturvedi: As a writer, primarily I enjoy comedy, dramedy, coming of age, slice of life, that kind of thing. I was looking to do a workplace comedy. I was enjoying Superstore a lot, I was enjoying Brooklyn Nine-Nine and I thought you know, Canada needs something like this. And then I started thinking of workplaces that I knew. Whenever I would go travel, I would stay at hostels, so I spent a lot of my 20s and early 30s in that environment. And that idea got me really excited. It’s a workplace which hasn’t been seen before on screen and it’s also fascinating because nobody aspires to work in one.
EA: Where do you draw the comedic elements in the hustle and bustle of a hostel?
RC: If you’ve ever lived at a hostel or stayed there for a significant amount of time you’ll see that everyone there is between places. I’ve met people at hostels who wanted to learn the local language, people are out between trips or even between relationships. A lot of people were traveling because they had a big breakup or they just lost their jobs and they wanted to find themselves. That in-between space of your 20s and 30s, when you’re going between school and complete adulthood, and you’re somewhere in between the hostel became a metaphor for those in-between years. And once that idea was there, I was like there’s always something happening inside the hostel. They could run out of beds at some point, or the roof is leaking, so the place itself is funny.
EA: What set your eyes on London, Ontario being the location?
RC: It started out with a joke, really. Realizing that the only London International Airport exists in London, Ontario and not in London, England. So that started the premise of what if, some people started landing in London, Ontario thinking that they were going to England. When we shot for the show, we actually shot at the airport there, and employees told us that at least once a week, they get a phone call from somebody who was missing their flight out of Heathrow, and they call up the London International Airport saying, ‘When is the next one?’ I was like, ‘Sir, you’ve called Canada, we have one flight every day.’ We pitched this at the Forest City Film Festival, and that got us a broadcaster deal with Bell Fibe. It being set in London, is important to me because it also sets the tone pretty well. I think a lot of people in the province are like, I need to start in Toronto, I need to get big there, and then I can go further and further. But a lot of people just want somewhere to start, so they try a smaller city like London. It’s what they try to make of it. I was telling someone I want to make a show in London, Ontario and they told me the great thing about London is that it is 2 hours from everything good. I thought that was such a funny way to describe it. If you want to go to the US, it’s two hours on one side. If you want to go to Niagara, it’s two hours on one side. If you want to go watch the Jays game, you go two hours on one side.
After spending time over there, we were exposed to so much of the culture that exists in London. The town is fascinating, the people are great, we learned a lot about the place and felt like it was a great place to set a sitcom. It’s the first time the city has played for itself in a TV show. But we’re happy that we were able to make that happen.
I was at the Forest City Film Festival and we were having a Q&A, and I was telling someone that as a Canadian creator and a Canadian, somebody who’s lived here for 20 plus years, more than two decades, I somehow know more about Atlanta and New York and New Jersey, and I know all the neighborhoods of LA like Malibu, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills and I don’t know about Scarborough and I don’t know enough about Markham, I don’t know enough about Guelph, London — places that are within a two hour driving distance from me. There’s something wrong there, right? We don’t know about our neighbors, but we know about the rest of the world. So I think there’s something to be spoken to about that and about how we need to tell more Canadian stories, promote travel more within our cities, because that is what Canadian identity is for us. And we need more of that, especially in the times that we’re in.
EA: We’re at a time right now where South Asian people are facing a lot of racism and hatred, a lot of this stemming from people viewing South Asian immigrants as though they are trying to take jobs away from Canadians. Your show follows a South Asian woman that predominantly works with other immigrants. What does it mean to you to make a show like that right now?
RC: From our point of view, we did not want to come up and say, ‘look at what an important thing we’re doing by being diverse.’ My life in itself is diverse, right? I’m a brown man. I was born in Mumbai, I’ve been here for 20 years. Canada is the only country I’m a citizen of. I feel I belong as much as anyone else. I have been married to a Colombian-Canadian woman who also moved here as a first-generation immigrant. My co-creator, Charlie Wally, is a first-generation immigrant. The Globe and Mail called us a truly Canadian show, and that felt really nice because that is how we see the world. And for us, we had done our casting and then somebody was like, ‘Hey, this is such a diverse cast.’ But when we were casting for it, it was completely natural to us. We were casting the best person for every role. We were never looking for someone of a particular colour, that’s just how it came together. We were sure that the lead would be South Asian, because it came from my experience. And I was born in Gujarat, which is a province in India. And those people are known for their hospitality, the Patel community. They own like 80% of the motels in the US. And like Misha Patel, she comes from the same community. So she has a history of hospitality in her family. Our chef in the hostel, his name is Daniel, he is Chilean. He came here as a refugee and has a visa problem, but he’s come here to fulfill his ambitions. Jean Yoon’s character, Harriet, she’s lived an adventurous life, and she has a fake ID. She pretends she’s 25 and lives at this youth hostel. We’ve got Sean Cullen, one of the comedy veterans of this country. We’ve got Ali Hassan playing the dad.
If you look at the set we have, there were first generation Canadians, there were Canadians who have been here for many generations. There were people who have come here as refugees, people who used to be heads of department in their own countries and could not get jobs here because of lack of Canadian experience. So we got all these people to come together and we’ve got these brilliant people that the Canadian industry is ignoring. And we got to work together as one family to put something that makes people laugh.
For me, this is normal, regardless of whether there’s a diversity movement going on or not. In 2018 also, this is the kind of show I would have made and in 2030 when diversity isn’t something people do for brownie points anymore. Your world and my world will still be a diverse world because that is our day-to-day. We wake up and the places we live in are diverse.
EA: You mentioned in an interview with The TV Watercooler that the first season centers on Misha’s adjustment to life between capitalism and community. I felt that was a great insight into the show and also characterizes something a lot of young adults have to deal with. What message do you think people can get from 18 to 35 about capitalism and how it has impacted community building?
RC: It’s those years, where you want to see the world a certain way. You’re trying to make sense of how the world exists. You expect the world to be a certain way and you expect a certain idea of what is right and what is just and what the world should feel like and what adulthood should be like. And then there’s a generation before you that says, ‘oh, this is not the real world. You know, your jobs are not real or the things that you’re trying to do are too unrealistic and too idealistic.’ We are making commentary on capitalism, and we’re making commentary on community; there’s always comedy in that push and pull. You have all this ambition, but also all this care for community. You want to be there for your parents’ birthdays but you also have an event to attend. There’s always competing priorities of, you know, do I get ahead in this career thing 10 steps ahead over here, but every time I go over here, why does it feel like I’m losing this thing, or these people, that are also so dear to me?
EA: That experience must also be different for a first-generation immigrant.
RC: Yeah, there’s also a reason I’m 40 years old and making my first show. I started writing when I was 25 or 26. I’d just gotten a master’s in computer science. And then once I got my first job, that was the only time I felt brave enough that I could go up to my family and my parents and say, ‘hey, I’m going to take part-time classes as a hobby.’ And for 10 years, that is all they would tell people is, ‘he’s going out on set and he’s helping people out, but it’s a hobby.’ I started working in TV full-time at 36 years of age, right? When people would say, oh, you have to have six months of salary if you want to change careers, I was worried. I had a few years worth of salary. I’m still driving a 20 year old beater car and I don’t shop for anything. I don’t buy shoes, belts, watches, anything. Everything for the past decade has just been, oh, I need to invest, I need to save so that I can do this thing that I really, really want to do. But it’s a different journey that first-generation immigrants have to take because it’s unprecedented. You’re going from zero to one. You’re going from where nothing existed to creating something and without a support system. My dad does not have a second cottage; there’s not a lot of wealth to fall back on.
The Reel Asian International Film Festival runs from Nov. 5 to 15. Rahul Chaturvedi will be running a masterclass on Wednesday Nov. 12, giving more details on how the production came together, giving aspiring filmmakers and creatives a free crash course on what goes into making a series. For details visit reelasian.com.