Deli Boys star Saagar Shaikh learns how to teach drama at UT-San Antonio

San Antonio actor Saagar Shaikh plays the role of Raj Dar on the Hulu series Deli Boys. He’s also had a recurring role in the miniseries Ms. Marvel. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Hulu

When Pakistani American actor and UT-San Antonio grad Saagar Shaikh was invited last year to talk to film students at his alma mater, he had no idea it would lead to a job.

“At the end of the panel, I said, ‘If you need me to come back to teach next semester, let me know,’” Shaikh, 39, told the Current during an interview. “I said it because I thought I was severely unqualified to teach. So, I was really surprised when they sent me an email asking me if I was joking or if I was serious.”

Shaikh also shared a story of that encounter late last month during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with co-star Asif Ali to talk about Season 2 of their Hulu comedy series, Deli Boys. The new season premieres May 28, 2026.

Although born in Houston, Shaikh moved to San Antonio as a teenager and graduated from Marshall High School. He earned his business degree from UT-San Antonio in 2011 before Hollywood came calling.

This past spring semester, Shaikh became a professor of practice in the dramatic arts program at the university, where his focus was to bring real-world acting experience into the classroom.

During our interview, Shaikh talked about what he thinks his students learned from a working actor, what surprised him about teaching and what the experience inside the classroom inspired him to do next.

What do you think students gained from learning under a working actor, instead of someone who’s primarily been focused on academia?

To be completely honest with you, I don’t think most of them realized I was a working actor until, like, the fourth class. I would talk about Deli Boys here and there, but I didn’t bring it up a ton, because I wanted to focus on them. And I guess I just assumed that they all knew. But in the first few classes, there were only a few students that seemed excited to see me. I was like, “OK, they’re chill.” It turns out it’s not that they were chill, it’s just that they didn’t know that I was on a TV show. So, around the fourth class, I asked them, “Is there anybody here who hasn’t seen Deli Boys?” and almost everybody raised their hand.

And then you turned watching it into an assignment?

I made them watch the first episode in class. At the end of the semester, I made the whole class take a Deli Boys quiz for extra credit. Nobody got a 100% on the quiz. A lot of the students wrote a note on the back of the quiz saying, “Sorry, I still haven’t seen the show yet!” That blew my mind, because if I was passionate about a class I was taking and the professor was a practitioner in that industry, I’d want to know everything about him. I feel like generationally things are different.

You joked with Jimmy Kimmel that some students really pissed you off, but that they’re the ones you cared about the most. Can you give me an example of what a student might have done to push your buttons?

There was a kid who was this naturally larger-than-life performer. He moved around a lot. I had the hardest time making him more grounded. I gave him an assignment in front of everybody where I told him, “You are not allowed to [use] your hands. You have to keep your hands down.” And he couldn’t do it. His movements manifested to his neck, and he kept making weird movements with his head. He was one of the most passionate kids in class. So, it was students like him that made things interesting.

Did any of your students remind you of yourself?

There were these two girls in my class, two of my favorite students, who would always ask great questions and always take notes. They knew it was a rare opportunity to have a working actor as a professor, and they wanted to take advantage of that knowledge. They reminded me of myself because this industry is very fickle, and it doesn’t promise anything to anybody. So, your responsibility as a performer is to soak up everything you can and be present and observant. I think students should be chasing passion. That’s how I try to live my life. I’m obsessed with what I do for a living. I’m always trying to observe everybody around me. I wear it on my sleeve wherever I go.

Do you literally wear it on your sleeve? Do you go places wearing a Deli Boys shirt?

(Laughs.) You know what, I’m literally wearing a Deli Boys shirt right now!

What have you learned about yourself since stepping into the role of professor?

I think it has increased my drive to want to direct. So, while I’m pretty booked for most of the summer, I’m trying to make it a goal of mine to direct a short film before the end of the year. By giving students notes, I feel like I’ve already worked with the most difficult actors in the world at this point, because new actors are hard to direct. It was difficult to wrangle 25 students and get them all to understand what I was trying to teach them. There’s a part of me that feels like I did. I really hope they got what they wanted out of it.

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