By Aisling Murphy, Special to the Star | Toronto Star
His Crave dramedy was inspired by Donald Glover’s Atlanta. It showcases the life of a South Asian family in the GTA “in an authentic way.”
Don’t ask Jasmeet Raina about Jus Reign.
Raina is the mastermind behind “Late Bloomer,” a new dramedy inspired by the likes of FX’s “Atlanta” and HBO’s “The Sopranos” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Soft-spoken and thoughtful, he seems to carry a weary disdain for the internet and the influencers holding it up; he keeps a relatively low profile on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram.
Jus Reign, on the other hand, was Raina’s online moniker for years, under which he posted hundreds of viral comedy videos about life as a Punjabi Sikh in Canada. He was irreverent and funny, an influencer who shed light on Canada’s growing South Asian communities while tapping into the possibilities of a career built on social media. With over a million followers and subscribers across sites like YouTube and Vine, he was a superstar on the rise.
In 2018, he disappeared from the internet.
Now, in 2024, Raina lives and works under his real name, his influencing career left behind in favour of more rewarding artistic pursuits like “Late Bloomer.” The show follows wannabe content creator Jasmeet Dutta — sound familiar? — as he navigates the schism between his complex family life and his dreams of making it online.
“I’m asked all the time why I left the internet,” Raina said in an interview. “It can be such a wild and demanding place, and I wanted to write something like this project. I had to put as much of me in it as I could and I needed space to do that.” When Raina stopped posting to his YouTube channel in 2018, conspiracy theories abounded — had he died? gotten married? moved away? — and, laughing, Raina said most of his fans’ conclusions about what had happened were wrong.
“Taking a break was a good thing,” he said. “People would send me stuff all the time and there are some good theories out there. But being on the internet all the time — you always have to be on and I think that can take a toll sometimes.”
Raina first planted the seed that would become “Late Bloomer” in 2015, he said, though he started fleshing the idea out more fulsomely after he stepped away from the internet. “The Sopranos” provided an unlikely source of inspiration as he started building his onscreen counterpart’s world.
“When I was watching it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is how it feels to see yourself represented on TV,’” he said. “I feel like the Italian-American family is pretty similar to the South Asian family, all the family dynamics, all the uncles and the cousins. It’s a brilliant show and one of the funniest shows I’ve seen; it’s slept on how funny that show is.
“And then seeing what Donald Glover did with ‘Atlanta,’ I love that show,” he continued. “It shows an authentic experience of what it feels like to be a part of a community. I think any writer or artist who’s able to encapsulate that is very, very special, and now I realize how much work it takes to do that.”
“Late Bloomer” takes a frank approach to showcasing the life of a South Asian family in the GTA: the show’s protagonist lives in an oh-so-familiar basement bedroom, working as a delivery driver for his family’s tiffin business in between posting videos online. Unlike other Canadian TV shows, “Late Bloomer” demonstrates a more lived-in, less polished type of representation for South Asian families — and that’s a good thing, said Raina.
“We really took the time to show this world in an authentic way,” he said. “I feel like any time before when you’ve seen South Asian families on TV, it hasn’t felt raw enough. They don’t feel ‘immigrant’ enough, they’re too perfect. So for me it was important that we had those details. There’s magic in clutter and the things that don’t go together. There’s stuff crammed under the stairwell: it’s the messiness of the hoarders we can be sometimes.”
Raina added that he strives to be overdescriptive as a writer, “so that it’s as clear what it’s like to live in this world as possible.”
“Late Bloomer” comes at a pivotal time for South Asian communities in Canada, often erroneously blamed for everything from the housing crisis to the lack of available jobs. Raina rejects these “fear narratives” and hopes “Late Bloomer” reaches a variety of audiences across the country.
“There are more South Asian immigrants coming into this country,” he said. “There’s a lot of resistance to that; you see it on social media. People are blatant about how much they oppose South Asians being here, especially now. There’s so much animosity toward Indians in particular, which is so disheartening, and it isn’t talked about much. People say these things about South Asians because nobody cares.
“So I hope the show illuminates that a bit,” he continued. “We are people. We have struggles and emotions and families and ideas.”
“Late Bloomer” premieres on Crave on Friday.