As a kid post-9/11, Jasmeet Raina became funny so he wouldn't be seen as a 'threat'

Jasmeet Raina is back with Season 2 of Late Bloomer — his half-hour comedy series inspired by his own life as a turban-wearing Punjabi Canadian millennial. But this time around, in addition to creating, writing and starring in the show, Raina found himself in the director's chair for two episodes.

The first episode he directed, "Not My Uncle," follows his younger self at school on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Jasmeet is with his cousin, Neal, as they watch live coverage of the attacks with their classmates. All of a sudden, the kids start to stare at Jasmeet and Neal.

Within a couple days, a rumour starts at Jasmeet's school that Osama bin Laden is his uncle. Jasmeet gets into a fight on the basketball court and the other kid says, "What are you going to do, fly a plane into my house now?"

"That episode is in its core about these two cousins," Raina tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "We see where they left off at the end of Season 1, and there's been this tension between them…. They're still best friends, cousins, but there's been this underlying tension that they've never really addressed."

While Jasmeet and Neal both grew up together in the Sikh community and wear head coverings, Neal is white. Tension develops between them as Jasmeet begins to notice that the expectations placed on his cousin seem to be different than those placed on him.

"I was 11 when 9/11 happened," Raina says. "I just started a new school, it was middle school, and I was excited…. Then 9/11 happens and everything just switches up, even the racism. Before it was just casual, funny … and then all of a sudden you're associated with terrorism."

After the Sept. 11 attacks there was a sharp increase in Islamaphobic hate crimes, but Sikh people — who were being misidentified — became targets as well.

"For a lot of kids around my age, myself included, we lost a bit of innocence there," Raina says.  "It forced us to grow up and adapt a survivor mentality very fast at a very young age. My route, I think, was like, OK, I got to be likable. I got to be not seen as a threat. So I kind of became funny in a sense. It took a while for me to get there. I was angry. I was bitter. And then I was like, 'I can't be angry and bitter. I'm just going to start being funny in class, and people can understand that there isn't a threat level here.'"

Drawing on his real-life experiences, Raina says he had to carefully pick and choose the moments that would best serve the story in Late Bloomer.

"You can only fit so much in an episode," he says. "I know a lot of Sikh kids that went through the exact same situations and exact same remarks and exact same tension. They faced the same type of thing … so, yeah, it was a pretty universal experience, I think, for not just Sikh kids, but kids of colour, kids of immigrants, brown kids in general."

Season 2 of Late Bloomer is available now on Crave in Canada. On May 9, Raina will be appearing at Toronto Departure Festival for a special screening of the episode titled "New Canadian," followed by a moderated conversation about the new season.

The full interview with Jasmeet Raina is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Jasmeet Raina produced by Cora Nijhawan.