Jasmeet Raina’s LATE BLOOMER Finds Humour and Humanity in the Discomfort of Duality

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede What emotions are running through Jasmeet Raina’s head with his semi-autobiographical comedy series LATE BLOOMER set to debut on Friday, Jan. 19, with the first two episodes dropping on Crave? “I’m relieved, I’m excited, I’m also very nervous,” admitted the popular comedian, storyteller, and online content creator, also known as Jus Reign. “This is something that’s so different from anything I’ve ever done. It’s also way more vulnerable than anything I’ve ever done. It’s pushing the boundaries and the envelope in a lot of ways that I was previously kind of scared to do. But with anything I’ve ever been this nervous about, it has always been a good thing, so that’s what I’m keeping in mind.” Created by and starring Raina as a burgeoning online celebrity named Jasmeet Dutta, LATE BLOOMER is an eight-part series loosely inspired by Raina’s life as a Punjabi Sikh millennial navigating the intersection of cultural traditions and contemporary life in North America. When viewers first meet the Jasmeet character, he’s speaking to the camera, confidently preaching to his online fan base about how great his life is, still living at home with his parents, with free food and free rent and free laundry services, and how everyone needs to get over whatever stigma is attached to such a sweet arrangement. Then there’s a quick cut to a comically tense family dinner. “The primary theme of the show is duality, so I thought that should be the first scene, right away,” explained Raina, who reached global audiences across social media as Jus Reign, and was one of Much Digital Studios’ first content creators in 2015. “We should see the two versions of his life, internet versus real life, or one culture versus another, and encapsulate what that duality feels like.” From there, Jasmeet continues his contradictory path of trying to do what he wants, while also not offending his community. Later in the first episode of LATE BLOOMER, Jasmeet is convinced by a flirtatious online acquaintance to exchange some sexy photos, but before he can send the nude pics to the intended recipient, he gets interrupted by his nosy mom, and then – horror of horrors – his laptop gets stolen. “He has this pressure to conduct himself a certain way, and that situation came from a personal place in terms of thinking, ‘what would be the worst thing that could happen to me?’ ” Raina said. “I just kind of wrote the pilot from there.” Speaking of writing, one of the challenges for Raina while crafting LATE BLOOMER must have been keeping the storylines about online developments, dialogue, and technologies up to date. “That’s actually a great question, because the internet moves so fast,” Raina agreed. “I had to keep updating things constantly, even in terms of some of the apps that the characters would use. The inception of this show happened back in 2015, but the version that it is now really didn’t get solidified until 2019. That’s when I took a year off to really carve out what I wanted the show to be. But, even since then, right through production, things were always moving and changing and constantly evolving. It’s like a race against the internet.” The irony of that last statement was not lost on Raina. “I was part of that race,” he acknowledged. “I was the guy that other people, I guess, were racing against, because I was on the internet. And now I’m like, ‘oh, okay, now I know how this feels,’ when you’re trying to make something much bigger. But I think it’s still all good. You have to keep it current. There are different mediums and different stories, but it does keep you on your toes.” Technological advances notwithstanding, the family-focused humour in LATE BLOOMER is both specific to the community Raina is highlighting, and completely universal. For example, in the second episode, Jasmeet finally has an important meeting lined up that could catapult his career, but in his mom’s eyes that isn’t nearly as important as a decent sale on milk. Asked about the hilarious scene that ensues, Raina said, “that was a little bit exaggerated, but not far off to how that situation panned out.” Meshing family, fame, and fun, LATE BLOOMER is better late than never. billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv