The creators of the canceled sitcom always prioritized laughs but never forgot where their show was set.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
(Bashirs brother Sultan is the shows third co-creator.)
Whatever it is, you will see the seeds ofSouth Sidein it.
Well take everything we learned fromSouth Sideand bring it to the next projects, Salahuddin says.
And the hope is well reach even more folks.
You really had to go above and beyond to watch that show, and yet we really did.
On Sunday nights, thered be folks in the common rooms of the dorms watching it.
Or I remember one time I came to Bashir and I was like, We actually messed up!
To a certain extent, we are comic-book nerds and fans of lore.
:Diallo, you just nailed one of the best things about writing comedy.
Rather than look at them as Weve got to fix this, its like, No no no.
What is it about your brains that likes lore?
Where does it come from?B.S.
:I feel likeThe Simpsonsreally did a great job with lore.
They would just build backstories on their characters.
But I would say specifically where it comes from is that were children of the 80s, man.
I feel like we had a much more diverse palette of kids shows growing up.
We hadThe TransformersandGoBots, and they did not cannibalize each other there was room for both of them!
We had theGhostbusterscartoon and theRealGhostbusterscartoon!
The work of Steven Spielberg, obviously.
The work of Paul Reubens and Pee-wee Herman.
So many of the things we grew up loving were so much deeper than they were on the surface.
I throw the fishes and the fishes come back to me!
Such a great deep-cut character.
In season four, there definitely would have been more Kardell Sr.s and more Trells.
Bishop is the founding member of that club.
So to a certain extent, this was our chance to do live Muppets, to do liveSimpsons.
:Im so proud of the generosity of our writers room, too.
But then our writers would also write funny stuff that one another would be funny in.
We want everybody to score.
So you have all of our writers being like, How do we make this person funnier?
We gotta make her funnier, because we feel like, for the audience, you want that.
Weve always had some writers on set pitching ideas.
And thats one of the best things about that show.
South Sideconsistently would get incredible performances from guest actors.
How did you approach these castings?B.S.
:One thing we love aboutSouth Sideis that we really were collecting an ensemble.
He tried out for so many parts.
:I loved hearing from actors when they were on our set.
We dont do throwaway.
Even if you have one line, were all thinking about you.
We all want you to be strong and funny.
This is my favorite show to not have a line on!
:People dont realize how big a theater town Chicago is too.
I grew up going to the Goodman, to the Steppenwolf, to all these wonderful plays and shows.
All these folks still love to come to our show.
The show would often cast nonactors from around Chicago.
:Well, we certainly cant make somebody be a person who intrigues us.
Thats something that, luckily for us, they already bring.
Because if youre setting them up to fail, nobody wants to do your show, right?
We learned a lot from that, so for our show, its very similar.
But also you have just that confidence where were telling them, Youre here for a reason.
Youre not here to be somebody different; youre here because we like who you are.
I was at my moms house and she told me where to go buy some snow cones.
The snow-cone vendor did not recognize me, and he was making me die laughing!
Chicago is full of people like that.
Lets have Chicago speak for itself.
But he was able to be himself.
Well even do a little baby improv with people on set.
Vic Mensa is coming to us.
Hollywoods gonna come calling with some other stuff to do.It changed a lot over ten years.
In the season-three standout The Laughter, a character says, Were all in danger here.
Who would have ever thought:Chicago, unsafe?
What were the conversations like around moments that do touch on violence?B.S.
:We dont ever want to focus on it, period.
That being said, we are comedy writers, and we make comedy.
If somebody pitches a joke that we laugh at, were gonna do it.
That was not in the pilot script.
We were watching that scene on set and we just said, You know what?
Do one more take where you guys come outside and you hear gunshots and you run back in.
Thats actually in some ways the central theme ofSouth Side.
But what it looked like was them just responding to some gunfire.
Because if it made us laugh, we like to believe its gonna make the audience laugh.
To show Chicago as you knew it, did you have to give it a heightened reality?B.S.
But in terms of the tone of the world, it was always going to be silly.
D.R.:Poignant.
B.S.:No.
1: Thats not comedy.
And lastly: Audiences dont laugh at clever plot points.
They dont even laugh at cool stories.
They laugh at moments.
Its Joey Tribbiani saying How you doin?
Its Jasper saying Thats a paddlin.
Those are the things wed say in the high-school hallways the next day after the shows aired.
Nobody talks about that.
Thats a very complicated way of thinking about money and charity.B.S.:Absolutely.
And his reality included these conversations.
He would start off with still-life drawings of pears in a bowl, and eventually it was Mandela.
It was the things that were on his radar then.
It was the same way for us.
But along the way, Chicago was more than just the political Chicago or even the Black Chicago.
Weve never wanted to be strident, but our worldview affects what we create, like any artist.
Simon is so enamored with capitalism, you know what I mean?
We do slip our things in there, but our No.
1 mission is always to make people laugh.
It goes to the theme, as I said earlier, where these characters really cant escape their circumstances.
We really wanted to make it from our point of view, from our perspective.
So many of these characters are people from my family, from our families.
My auntie and uncle were both cops.
I have another auntie who worked at the post office.
My brother was in the military.
These are the jobs you get when you come from these circumstances.
So for us, it was putting some of their voices out there.
I want to ask about your partnership.
I think itll be really fun!
As we push into what weve called our second generation of development, we have some more collaborators.
But sometimes you look and nobodys making them or theyre not doing them well, in our opinion.
:Even the guys who play the twins onSouth Side, they come from the South Side.
It was always like,These guys are so funny and so Chicago.
:Its ironic that you bring that up because they are now friends with my siblings on Facebook.
My siblings are older than I am, and Im literally hearing about the twins from my siblings now!
Like, my sister will be like, Oh, Kareem had me in stitches!
Im like, When were you talking to Kareem?
:No, gosh!
:Cant afford it!
As weve gotten older, obviously theres room for everybody to have what they want.
Then we got over there, and it was the opposite.
Thats a whole new process youve got to get used to.
When we didSouth Side, we really knew who we were comedically.
We knew what the show was supposed to be.
Even though there were still questions and hurdles, we were stronger because wed already been through that process.
At the same time, I just feel like you cant note funny, you know what I mean?
Either you got it or you dont.
But theres no amount of noting or anything else thats gonna make that happen.
When are you at your happiest?B.S.
I loved working atFallon.
You learn some shit, you develop some toughness.
Not today you aint!
What do you hope its legacy is?B.S.
Like, I love the showArcher, but that isnt the first show those guys did.
You see the seeds ofArcherinFrisky Dingo.
For us, itll be the same.
Theres at least one project weve written thats straight-up horror.
Sci-fi, perhaps weve got a lot more coming.
It should feel like,Whoa, this has got me on the edge of my seat.
So you guys are coming up on 30 years of knowing each other.
In your work since, do you still see the seeds of the people you were 30 years ago?
Do you go, like,Thats still those kids?B.S.
I love that Spielberg is doing the same thing with the Indy franchise.
Its gonna run for years.
It aint that complicated!
I was watchingHousethe other day and thinking,Ah, man, we can just do this!
This guys an obstetrician but hes an asshole!
Every timeLaw & Orderis on, Ill watch it.
IfSVUis on, I dont care what Im doing, Im gonna watch the rest of that episode.
Those guys really figured out how to keep me in my seat.
Wait,whatis this?
And its just so weird because its so unexpected.
