After his parents immigrated to the United States, the silly backstory goes, they fell in love with American television, especially Diff’rent Strokes. When they saw that Diff’rent Strokes housekeeper Mrs. Garrett was also Mrs. Garrett, the housemother on The Facts of Life, they thought, Look at this woman! She is the hardest working person in America! We will name our son after her. We will call him Garrett. After Garrett was born, his parents felt they perhaps needed to bequeath to their next child a name with far fewer expectations, so they went with the frivolous Mallory from Family Ties. In our pilot episode, of course, Garrett is the lazy one who’s down and out, while his younger sister, Mallory, is a successful, hardworking doctor. Matt and I finished writing a pitch and went out with the “Untitled Kal Penn Project,” with Mike Schur, David Miner, and Dan Spilo executive producing alongside us.
There was quick and enthusiastic reception from NBC. Given Schur’s relationship with them （The Good Place was going into its final season）， we figured that developing the “Untitled Kal Penn Project” there gave us the best shot of having it end up on the air. Most importantly, they committed to us that they would invest in the show if they picked it up. “Comedy is hard. It takes time to find its audience. Sometimes multiple seasons. We’re the best at what we do because we know how to invest in comedy and sell the ones we put on the air.” Creatively, the NBC executives seemed to be especially proud to develop our unifying feel-good comedy at a time when the nightly news featured mostly the opposite. We turned in a pilot script, and they actually allowed us to shoot it. We called it Sunnyside because it sounded as uplifting as our story and it’s also a wonderfully diverse part of New York City. Another option was Flushing, but that’s a really terrible title for a show.
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This was new territory for me as a producer and creator! Things moved fast. I needed to hire an assistant to help juggle my different obligations. I didn’t have to search far: Romen Borsellino （of cum laude thesis and Obama dildo vetting fame） had moved to LA to pursue a career in entertainment. I brought him on quickly. I couldn’t believe it but the unbeatable casting director Allison Jones—who did Family Ties and Fresh Prince—agreed to cast Sunnyside. （Allison is the comedy go-to in the casting world, and only takes on projects she believes in, truly the highest compliment for any comedy creator.） We hired a talented line producer, Kris Eber, and began the process of staffing up a crew and getting everything as perfect as we could for our pilot shoot.
Auditioning actors made me happy. Our Sunnyside characters were all immigrants, and each was grounded in a solid backstory independent of their appearance. This allowed Allison to cast an especially wide net to find the strongest, funniest talent regardless of specific background—we let her know that we’d lock in those character traits （ethnicity, country of origin, culture） based on whoever we cast, not the other way around, as was traditionally the case.
Comedian Moses Storm was our first hire, delivering a flawless performance of his character Brady, a closeted-about-his-undocumented-status all-American frat boy loosely based on an acquaintance in Detroit （the undocumented guy thrown in ICE detention while teaching English）。 Matt Murray modeled Samba Schutte’s taxi-driving Ethiopian doctor Hakim after an Italian car salesman he knew. After Diana-Maria Riva booked the role of Griselda （based on Matt’s crossing guard）， Kiran Deol, Tudor Petrut, and Ana Villafa?e rounded out the next few hires. There were only two roles remaining: wealthy Asian American siblings who were heirs to their father’s fortune.
Our top choices were Chinese American actor Poppy Liu （whose vapid take on the character won her increasing points during each audition round） and Korean American comedian Joel Kim Booster. Joel took a character that was written more like a self-absorbed finance bro and added so many layers of quirky, flamboyant detail to him that Allison remarked, “Obviously you’re hiring Joel Kim Booster… you don’t just let an actor like that walk away from you. Somebody else will scoop him up.” At this point, most producers would a） pick either Joel or Poppy and find a second-choice Chinese American or Korean American actor to play opposite them or b） say something like, “Cast Joel and Poppy, who cares if the brother is Korean American and the sister is Chinese American… blah blah blah… all look the same anyway.”
We thought both approaches would have been misguided. Of course, we were going to cast them both! We loved that it offered an opportunity to accentuate the bizarre comedy we were pursuing in the first place. Matt re-tweaked the backstory: Poppy’s and Joel’s characters were now very strange half siblings who shared the same father but different mothers entirely, a by-product of an estranged billionaire oligarch dad who technically lives in international waters.
After the network table read of the pilot with our almost impossibly diverse and talented cast, the electricity in the room was palpable. Once the executives trickled out, Allison leaned in and said, “I haven’t seen chemistry like this since NewsRadio. I just don’t see how they don’t pick this up.”
“Holy shit, Allison! I’m not sure what to say,” I mumbled through thankful laughter. “You’re comparing us to Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, and Dave Foley? NewsRadio ran for five seasons! Today felt so great… but I don’t want to jinx it!”
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With our director Oz Rodriguez （SNL, A.P. Bio） on board, the rest of the week was full of production meetings and rehearsals in which the characters really sprung to life—it made us even more confident in （and thankful for） the great team we had formed. On Wednesday of that week, the NBC legal department called a meeting with the cast to talk about ethical standards and social media. “We want to make sure that you don’t ever post photos that might give away any of the plot points or intellectual property of the show. If you ever have questions about whether it’s okay to post something, ask your executive producers.” Everyone looked at me. Oh right, I am indeed one of the EPs! “We also,” they continued, “want to make sure you don’t tweet anything that’s racial or sexual in nature, or really anything considered inappropriate.” Three-quarters of our cast happened to be stand-up comics. They all raised their hands.
“I have a question,” Joel spoke up. “My brand is literally talking about sexual things, that’s what I do. My stand-up comedy is about cum in butts. Are you saying I can’t tweet about cum in butts?”
The now-shocked-and-amused lawyer assured all the performers that these things were really just issues of context—NBC had no intention of getting in the way of anyone’s brand, as long as performers avoided mentioning the network by name in tweets that wouldn’t pass their purist benchmarks. “You can do stand-up comedy and tweet as you normally would, as long as you don’t mention or tag NBC.”
The next day, when Deadline gave accolades to our talented, funny cast with a flattering article titled “NBC Assembles Cast of Mostly Immigrant Actors for Kal Penn Pilot ‘Sunnyside,’？” Joel retweeted the link with his own hot take:
Despite his clear violation of their rules, the network was very cool about it and nobody asked me to tell Joel to take it down.2