The Chicago roots of the creative team behind Comedy Central’s South Side

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This article was published 01/08/2019 (2611 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHICAGO —I’m not sure I’ve seen a TV show that is as much a family affair as South Side, which premièred last week on Comedy Central.

A rent-to-own business on Chicago’s South Side is the show’s centre of gravity, where a striver named Simon begrudgingly works. One upside? That’s where his longtime pal and partner in knuckleheadedness Kareme works as well. Their boss is Kareme’s frequently exasperated twin brother, Q.

Here are the real-life family ties: Simon is played by Sultan Salahuddin, who is the older brother (by two years) of the show’s co-creator Bashir Salahuddin and they both grew up on Chicago’s South Shore and in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. They’ve known the twins, played by Kareme and Quincy Young, since high school. Sultan and the twins attended the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences; Bashir is a Whitney Young alum.

Bashir also co-stars on the show along with his wife, fellow South Side native Chandra Russell (who went to Lincoln Park High School) and together they play a pair of cops who are a study in opposites: He’s by the book but forever messing up, whereas she’s way off book but street smart. Neither is especially good on the job.

The rest of the sprawling cast is from Chicago as well — or Harvey, in the case of Chicago P.D.’s LaRoyce Hawkins, who plays a neighborhood heavy.

“That’s south of the South Side,” Bashir said quoting banter from the show. “The real South Side.”

Though the writers’ room — which also includes Sultan and Russell — was based in Los Angeles, everyone on its roster is from Chicago, most hailing from the South Side. That across-the-board city representation is rare for a show set (and filmed) in Chicago. But you notice it right away. It’s not a mistake that South Side sounds right.

“That’s the charm of the city,” Russell said, “the sometimes ridiculous specificities.”

I’ve given some friendly grief to the Dick Wolf Chicago shows over the years, which do film in the city but feel somewhat generic. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture Chicago Fire set in Pittsburgh instead.

That isn’t the case with South Side, which feels rooted in place.

Bashir Salahuddin is showrunner along with longtime writing partner Diallo Riddle, who also has an on-camera role. The pair met as undergraduates at Harvard and would later work together as writers on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (Slow Jam The News With Barack Obama was among their more notable contributions).

Riddle and fellow writer and executive producer Michael Blieden (who directed the series) are the only two major contributors not from the city.

“I’ve spent the last three summers here,” Riddle said about developing and eventually shooting the show, “and I’m not saying that qualifies me as a Chicagoan, but in a weird way you notice things that everyone else is taking for granted. So in some ways you almost need an outsider to sort of make the city new in your eyes.”

Riddle, Russell and the Salahuddins are based in L.A., but were in Chicago earlier this month, and Russell wanted to clarify a misconception.

In one of the show’s trailers, a new employee at the business introduces and humble-brags about herself: “Yes, I went to Kenwood. Yes, I know Eddy Curry, we used to go together. Yes, I was at his first and last game. Yes, it was in the same year. Yes, I used to braid his hair” — and so on.

Apparently some misunderstood the monologue. Here’s Russell: “For people from Chicago, I want you guys to know: We know that Eddy Curry did not go to Kenwood. I’m so tired of seeing people say that on Instagram. We know! She says: ‘I went to Kenwood’ — period. Then she starts a new sentence about Eddy Curry. We know that he did not go to Kenwood, thank you.”

“The subheadline of that is: Yes, we’re reading the comments,” Riddle said laughing.

Bashir: “I’m what you would call a lurker, which means I don’t have an account but I read all y’all’s stuff. I’m basically like the janitor in The Breakfast Club: I’m like, ‘Yeah, I read your notes.’”

But Russell said she’s stopped reading the comments.

“They just really show you how racist this country is… I had to stop.”

Sultan: “I personally don’t read the comments simply because you know people are going to have opinions no matter what you do. I really believe in the project and what we’ve done — but I know it’s not going to affect everybody the same way. And that’s OK.”

— Chicago Tribune