The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh Creator Vijal Patel On His Quasi-Autobiographical Sitcom

The 'family sitcom' gets a kick in the pants with The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, the new Freevee series from creator Vijal Patel, a veteran of acclaimed series like Black-ish, The Middle, and The Mayor. The series follows the Pradeep family, Indian immigrants seeking a new life in The United States. However, something clearly went wrong, since the show is told via flashbacks as the family and their neighbors are interviewed by a pair of federal agents investigating a community-shattering arson case.

The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh is loosely based on the life and upbringing of creator Vijal Patel, but with the serialized mystery element adding an extra layer of intrigue and excitement. In addition, being on Prime Video and Freevee instead of traditional broadcast television allows The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh to get away with saltier language and more risqué situations, while still remaining more-or-less family-friendly.

Related 10 Great Sitcoms That Totally Subvert Genre Expectations Changing the formula of a sitcom is no easy task, and though some TV shows are better off sticking to what they know, these defy all conventions.

Screen Rant interviewed Vijal Patel about his work on The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, which debuts October 15. He talks about how his work on other TV sitcoms helped prepare him for running his own show, casting the family, and how he and his fellow writers imbued their real-life experiences into the characters, thus making them feel more real. Finally, he hones in on one particular joke, in which the young son, Vinod, is compared to legendary actor Linda Hunt.

Vijal Patel on the Autobiographical Nature of The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh

"Audiences have opened themselves up to these broader stories that are relatable, universal, and hilarious."

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Screen Rant: First off, I love the show, I just watched all eight episodes in a row. I'm hooked. Anyway, you've worked on a lot of TV over the years. This is the first show where you're telling an Indian-American story. Are you like, oh, finally! Or are you like, oh, crap, I better deliver!

Vijal Patel: A little bit of both, right? Column A, column B. "Finally," more than anything. It really has been a long time in the making, a long time coming, and what I love is that the audiences have opened themselves up to these broader stories that are relatable, universal, and hilarious. The first thing I ever said is, "I want to make a funny show, then I want to make a funny show about Indians. Now, I want to make a funny show about Indians that's loosely based off my family," and that's because I love connecting. The reason I said funny first is because I love connecting through humor, through comedy. I feel really blessed to be able to do this show and to tell the Indian immigrant story, the Indian-American immigrant story. I have such a deep reservoir of stories and comedy to share with the world.

For you, have all roads led to this show, like when you were like, "I'm going to become a TV writer," did you always feel like, "At some point, I'm going to do this show?"

Vijal Patel: I think it's all roads led to the show. My experience as a child, we moved from India to Pittsburgh, that was the basis of stories I would tell, right? Because I'm a storyteller by nature, I usually tell autobiographical stories. So when I became a TV writer, I would write on other people's shows, and I'd write on amazing shows, Black-ish being one of them, and I'm like, oh, it's so much more fun to tell your own story, because Kenya Barris created Black-ish, and so much of his DNA is in that, it's his experience. So now, I'm going to tell the story of when my family moved to Pittsburgh from India, and that's Pradeeps of Pittsburgh.

The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh Benefits From The Freevee Network

"Hopefully this will create a style of storytelling in the family comedy that will spread and perpetuate."

And it must be nice getting to do it on a network like Freevee, where you have a little bit more leeway to be a little raunchier than they could ever get on ABC.

Vijal Patel: It has been such a gift to be able to tell stories and use language and honest emotional responses that reflect reality, to get to push the envelope a little bit in our storytelling. When you said you just watched all eight episodes in a row, Freevee lets us break a story in a way that has cliffhangers and has you hooked. To do that with a family comedy, and to be able to tell this ensemble story with a lot of heart and humor, but lots of twists and surprises, was the next level for my writing. I wasn't able to do that on other, more traditional shows. I loved writing on those, but it just didn't lend itself to this type of storytelling. So, yeah, my Amazon partners have been amazing to encourage that and want that. Hopefully this will create a style of storytelling in the family comedy that will spread and perpetuate.

You've got an incredible cast, I really fell in love with the whole family by the end of the first episode. I forget exactly what the line is, but of Ashwin, he's called "Linda Hunt in disguise," and I thought that that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

Vijal Patel: It's like, "Linda Hunt posing as a little boy," or something like that. Oh, Zak, I thank you for that. Thank you for saying that. I remember, I was sitting in my office and we're watching auditions or something, and I'm like, Ashwin is the greatest, and I'm like, "You know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of Linda Hunt for some reason." I think I'd just seen, like, Dune, the original Dune that Linda Hunt is in, and I just said this random thing, and then another writer's like, "Wouldn't it be funny if he was just Linda Hunt in disguise?" This was literally what we were saying, and we're like, "Oh, we've got to put this in the show!" and they were like, what are you doing? Why would you put that line in the show? I'm like, because pad thai noodles were coming out of our nose because we're eating lunch, and we're like, let's just put it in. So, Zak, you're my favorite person in the whole world now because you liked that line, because you quoted that line.

The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh Creator Vijal Patel on Casting the Family

"It wasn't about huge names. It was just about the characters."

Tell me about casting. Do you, like, do you cast to the adults? Do you cast to Naveen and Sindhu? Do you do the whole group together, or do you just kind of roll the dice and you happened to get extremely lucky?

Vijal Patel: That's a great question. So, the casting of the show, it started with a vision of my family, but then I moved to, "No, it's the Pradeeps," Naveen was the central piece of that, I love Naveen. Naveen has always been one of my favorite actors, but he's been a drama actor. He got his hands on the script, he connected with the script, and he called, and he says, "Hey, I want to play Mahesh Pradeep," and I'm like, "You're one of the best actors I've ever seen. I know you from Lost and The English Patient. Are you sure you want to do this?" He goes, I love this character so much, and I'm like, "Done! This is happening" From that point forward, we were just looking for Vinod. We were looking for Sudha. These are the characters' names. So we would just wait until we saw that character in the audition. And it wasn't about huge names. It was just about the characters. It was about this family, and they all started clicking in. We would just watch the audition. I'm like, there's Kamal. There's Bhanu. There's Vinod. And then Megan Hilty joined the cast, the great, amazing Megan Hilty, and Ethan Suplee, and we were over the moon. So, the casting was almost like we were just waiting for the character to show up in the auditions, and that's how we found them.

You said the show is based on your life moving from India to Pittsburgh. Is there any one particular character who you imbue with like, "That's me!" or is it spread out across the family?

Vijal Patel: It's a little bit between Vinod, the little boy, because that was my POV when I moved to America. I loved it. I loved Pittsburgh. I had hero worship of my neighbors, all that, and I was optimistic. And then there's a little bit of Mahesh Pradeep, because I am a dad now. It's funny, he started as my dad, but now I'm a dad, and so I can bring my experience, my optimism, my attempts to help lead my kids through their problems, through staying on the sunny side of life. I can now put that into the character. My dad did that too. Both of my parents did that. It's interesting to be a dad writing a story of me as a kid, but then also as a dad, so I can kind of get both ends of it. Like I said, this cast is just so good, and all the writers put a little piece of themselves in these characters, and that's why everybody's funny, the whole ensemble. On any given episode, you can kind of follow anybody's journey and be with them, even if they're in the wrong, because the cast is so amazing. The cast is so funny, and they elevate the stories to new heights that I couldn't have even dreamed of.

More About The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh Season 1

The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh follows the Pradeep family and the events of their life in America after moving from India. As told through hilarious (and often conflicting) flashbacks from an interrogation room, the Pradeeps quickly find themselves embroiled—romantically, personally, and professionally—with a polar-opposite neighborhood family, leading to a predicament with many surprising twists.

Check back soon for our other The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh interviews here:

Naveen Andrews & Ethan Suplee

Arjun Sriram & Ashwin Sakthivel

Sindhu Vee & Sahana Srinivasan

The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh season 1 begins streaming on October 17 on Prime Video.