Look! Brown People Working on our Favorite TV Shows!

At Elan, we’re excited about Spring, and not just for the warm weather- Spring also means many of the binge worthy shows we love are premiering new seasons.

(This piece has actually taken 5 times longer to write than usual, thanks to the new season of House of Cards.)

All of these great new episodes and the recent controversy regarding diversity in Hollywood has us thinking about how many Arabs, South Asians, and Iranians are working on our favorite shows.

We unfortunately had to dig deep for this list, but we did find some very cool and talented brown people working on a few of our favorite shows.

Hameed Shaukat, Producer
(House of Cards/Game of Thrones)

Hameed is a Pakistani American who produces television and movies. He’s been a producer on House of Cards since the first season in 2012. He’s also won an Emmy as producer of the Main Title Design for the Game of Thrones.

Alexander Siddig, Actor
(Game of Thrones)

The epitome of tall, dark and handsome, Alexander Siddig has been making women swoon for decades in TV shows and films playing characters like Dr. Julian Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Philip Burton in Primeval, Carthaginian general Hannibal in Hannibal – Rome’s Worst Nightmare, King Minos in Atlantis and as Prince Nasir Al-Subaai in Syriana (2005).

Originally from Sudan, Alexander joined the cast of Game of Thrones in season 5 as Doran Martell, Ruling Prince of Dorne.

Ramin Djawadi, Composer
(Game of Thrones)

Ramin is a German-Iranian composer who has The Game of Thrones main title song (don’t tell me it’s not stuck in your head now) for which he has won has won multiple awards.
Djawadi is a major dude in the industry- he also composed the Grammy nominated title score for Marvel’s Iron Man in 2008.

Kumail Nanjiani, Actor
(Silicon Valley)

Originally from Karachi, Pakistan Kumail is a stand-up comedian, actor and podcast host best known for his role as the annoying yet endearing “Dinesh” on HBO’s Emmy Award-nominated series Silicon Valley (one of Elan’s favorite shows ever) as well as for providing the voice of Prismo on the Emmy Award-winning animated series Adventure Time (another Elan favorite!!).

At 18, Kumail moved to the United States and attended Grinnell College in Iowa and completed a double major in Computer Science and Philosophy (like a good Pakistani son) but managed to land steady work as an actor after graduation. Go Pakistan!

Aly Mawji, Actor
(Silicon Valley)

Aly is an Indian/Pakistani actor known for Falling Overnight (2011), Colorforms (2003) Assist (2012) and Silicon Valley. He plays Aly Dutta, the head engineer from the show’s antagonistic company, Hooli.

Anna Khaja, Actress
(Silicon Valley)

Anna is an accomplished Pakistani, Irish, Turkish, Spanish and Indian actress who has held roles in 7 feature films as well as the TV shows Quantico, The Fosters, Stitchers, The Mentalist, Bones, True Blood, The Newsroom, NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds.

Anna now has a recurring role in the upcoming season of Silicon Valley. We can’t wait!

Zal Batmanglij, Executive Producer
(The OA)

Zal is an Iranian American film director and screenwriter. Zal directed and co-wrote the 2011 film Sound of My Voice and the 2013 film The East, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Now Zal is in the TV biz as co-executive producer of a new Netflix show called The OA. Netflix hasn’t disclosed many details on the show yet, but promises it to be “edgy.”

All signs point to “binge-worthy”.
Comment, share, critique-say something and support these talented people by watching their shows. Let us know if we’ve missed brown people that work on your favorite shows.

We would love to see this list grow!