May 14, 2021
Nasim Pedrad made a name for herself as a member of the comedic cast of Saturday Night Live a decade ago. But now the 39-year-old woman has started playing a 14-year-old boy in a new situation comedy titled “Chad.”
Pedrad, who came to the US at age three, is not just the star, she is also the writer, director and executive producer.
Chad is a 14-year-old high school freshman and immigrant from Iran who is desperate to fit in. And, in every episode, he fails miserably.
Pedrad said she wanted an adult to play the part because 14-year-olds just don’t understand how funny teens are. She also wanted to play the part because so much of Chad is actually 14-year-old Nasim, desperate to fit in—with the usual fitting-in crises exacerbated because Chad is an immigrant who doesn’t know what a prom is or that lamb stew is not the right food to bring to school in his lunchbox.
Pedrad converts from adult woman to teenage boy with the assistance of a) a tight wig of unruly hair, b) a chest binder to hide her curves, and c) fake heavy eyebrows that she feels are the key to hiding her femininity.
All of Chad’s classmates on the program are real teenagers.
The weekly program premiered Tuesday, April 6, on the TBS cable network. Nina, Pedrad’s younger sister—in real life—is also into comedy, mainly as a writer and producer. And she won an Oscar nomination this year for her work on the script of the film “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Both women grew up in Irvine, California.
Nasim was brought on “Saturday Night Live” as a cast member in 2009. She left in 2014 to work on the TV comedy series “Mulaney.” She was the star. But the program was not picked up for a second season—and the first season was even reduced from 16 episodes to 13. Pedrad then conceived “Chad,” but it wasn’t until now that a network agreed with her that the idea was a good one.
Pedrad told Variety, the daily newspaper of the entertainment industry, that there is more of her in Chad than people might understand. “Chad does feel more like me than not me. I don’t know why at the core of my spirit I feel like a 14-year-old boy — [maybe] because I grew up with a lot of guy cousins; I was such a tomboy; I played sports; I was a bit of a late-bloomer when it comes to finding my femininity. So even though he is a boy, every corner of this character reminds me of myself at that age — certainly the desire to fit in and the paralyzing fear of being different.
“I was caught between these two cultures: my parents were Persian, but I very much wanted to assimilate and feel like I belonged in America. And it’s already terrifying enough to be a teenager when you’re just wanting to not feel different than your peers. But when you’re an immigrant kid there’s almost this extra layer to get through to fit in.”
She said Chad is physically a blend of all 10 of her male cousins.
One problem she faced is that the show is set in contemporary America, not the America of 25 years ago when she was 14 and social media did not exist. To be contemporary, she found she had to interview kids aged 14 in 2021. “So, part of my process in the writers’ room when we first started was to literally just FaceTime with a bunch of different teenagers. It was pretty amazing how many of them were willing to talk to me and had zero questions about why I was asking.”
She told Entertainment Weekly, “This is the story of a 14-year-old Persian boy who is navigating his freshman year of high school and on a mission to become popular, and a lot of the comedy stems from the fact that he’s willing to get there at all costs. There’s nothing he’s not willing to do: He’ll throw his friend under the bus, he’ll compromise his relationship with family members, he’ll lie pathologically, whatever it takes. But you know it’s coming from such a desperate place that hopefully you can empathize with him and just laugh at it….
“He gets his ass handed to him in every single episode, but he’s so deeply hopeful that he just like hops right back up on his feet and genuinely believes that tomorrow could be different, almost in a delusional way.”
Chad’s family, of course, plays a major role in the comedy, which opened up some spots for other Iranian actors, including Saba Homayoon, who was born in Montreal and is only four years older than Pedrad, as her single mother and Paul Chahidi, who was born in England, as her devoted uncle.