'Little America' Depicts The Immigrant Experience Not Seen In Headlines

“Little America” is the new Apple TV + series that documents the complexity of the immigrant experience. Kumail Nanjiani and Joshuah Bearman join us to discuss the stories not seen in the daily headlines.

Guests

Kumail Nanjiani, executive producer of “Little America.” Co-wrote and starred in the 2017 Oscar-nominated film “The Big Sick.” (@kumailn)

Joshuah Bearman, executive producer of “Little America.” Co-founder of Epic Magazine, the source material for the original stories in “Little America.” (@joshbearman)

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Vulture: “We’re Lucky to Have Little America” — “Episodic anthology shows are a real mixed bag. For a while, I’ve held a firm “anti” position, thanks to the treacly, smug patness of Modern Love, the diminishing returns of Black Mirror, the underwhelming Twilight Zone remake, and the overrestrictive conceit of Room 104, which makes even its great episodes seem like they’re filling in a worksheet. There are a few shows that really test my distaste, though. There’s Documentary Now, which is more than welcome to keep doing whatever its weird heart desires. There’s High Maintenance, which makes surprise feel welcome rather than obnoxious.

“And now there’s Little America, a show which I was not prepared to love and then absolutely did. The Apple TV+ streaming series presents a new kind of publicity challenge for the outlet, whose previous releases all had big, buzzy draws of some sort. The Morning Show is almost unsustainably large in terms of both its star power and its budget. Dickinson, a much smaller and less obvious title to hang a launch on, nevertheless had the benefit of being extremely weird and beloved in niche corners.

“Shows like See and Servant have an explicit genre appeal. But Little America is like its name: a very small show with reasonably well-known producers (Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon) but few big-name actors or directors attached to it. There are eight half-hour episodes. Their scope is modest. The stories, which are sometimes delightful and sometimes tragic, are about relatively everyday lives. The show is beautiful.”

The Atlantic: “Finally, Apple Has Made a Great TV Show With Little America” — “For an enterprise so richly resourced, it’s remarkable just how middling Apple’s television offerings have been thus far. Since the premium service’s launch in November, its lineup has been almost impressively haphazard: There’s the discordant horror of M. Night Shyamalan’s (much-contested) Servant; the disappointing tonal incoherence of the network’s flagship series, The Morning Show; the virus-afflicted, post-apocalyptic landscape of See; and the glossy time warp of Dickinson.

“Thankfully, AppleTV+’s newest show, Little America, is almost nothing like the streaming behemoth’s prior offerings. The eight-episode anthology series draws inspiration from more immediate sources: the real-life stories of immigrants in America, first presented in Epic magazine’s compilation of the same name (one episode is based on the family experience of one of the show’s writers, Tze Chun).

“Each slightly fictionalized episode zooms in on one person, warmly depicting a slice of his or her life. Taken together, the installments offer a non-exhaustive mosaic of immigrant experiences. Little America’s guiding principle is its not-so-subtle affirmation of its characters’ humanity, an artistic intention that’s noble given the current political (and entertainment) climate but sometimes too lofty for its own good.”

The Daily Beast: “Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon on Why Hollywood Was ‘Scared’ of ‘Little America’s’ Immigrant Stories” — “There is a pivotal moment in the Apple TV+ anthology series Little America that so many of us can relate to—a character is weeping to a Kelly Clarkson song.

“The circumstances in this case are incredibly specific. A gay man from Syria named Rafiq (Haaz Sleiman) is fleeing violent persecution from his family, seeking asylum in the United States at the encouragement of a Kelly Clarkson-loving confidante. After a torturous amount of time spent waiting in hiding, his asylum is finally granted.

“When he arrives, his friend takes him to a place he never thought he’d see in his lifetime—a gay club—to experience something he never thought he’d feel: safe and accepted. A drag queen on stage is lip-synching to Clarkson’s ‘Breakaway.’ Rafiq is overcome. He bursts into tears.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org. [Copyright 2020 NPR]