AppleTV+ 'Little America' Season 2 has the guts to 'break stereotypes' of immigrants

An absolute delight of an anthology series, Little America has returned for Season 2 on AppleTV+ from co-showrunners Lee Eisenberg and Siân Heder, and executive producers Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon and Alan Yang, telling even more heartfelt, human stories that put immigrants front and centre.

Season 1 of Little America was purely based on the true stories told in Vox Media's Epic Magazine, but in Season 2, the content expanded where some episodes are based on unpublished true stories. While much of Season 1 had a focus on individual stories, Season 2 speaks more to cross-cultural connections in communities in Brooklyn, Detroit, Ohio and more U.S. cities.

To start off Season 2, as she did for the first season, Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta leads the first episode, titled Mr. Song, which stars Ki Hong Lee, Alan S. Kim, Phylicia Rashad, Jungeun Lee and Bruce Baek.

Mr. Song is based on the story of famed hat designed Luke Song, who famously designed Aretha Franklin's hat for the Barack Obama's inauguration.

In the Mr. Song episode of Little America, we start in Detroit with the Korean family. We meet a young Luke who watches his mother make hats at his family's shop, and develops a friendship with legendary radio DJ Martha Jean "The Queen," which leads to Luke's mom making church hats for Black women in the community. When we see Luke get older, he's incredibly creative but feels pressured to go to medical school to, as Luke's father puts it, have a stable and secure life. Eventually making his way back to his family home in Detroit, Luke's personal hat design career begins.

'It wasn't immigrant stories that we are used to expecting'

For Deepa Mehta, what she loved about being involved in Little America was that these are true stories about real people.

“It wasn't immigrant stories that we are used to expecting, these aren't traumatic ones about how difficult it is, or how wonderful it is, they were based on a platform of realism, and they had humanity and they had humour,” Mehta said. “More than anything else, they were extremely accessible.”

“It wasn't about race, it was about what binds us together as human beings, and that is an essential humanity. That's why I was attracted to it.”

Mehta was initially sent a different story to direct for Little America Season 2, one about a man from Afghanistan seeking asylum in New York, but she "fell in love" with Luke Song's story.

"I fell in love with it because it's not just a window into another culture or another set of immigrants,...it's the relationship between a Black woman and a Korean young man, and I thought that was fascinating," Mehta said.

“I just love the fact that his father loved opera… At the end of the day, you have a Korean man, who was selling vacuums, but actually closes his eyes and listens to [Mozart]. There's something that immediately breaks a stereotype. This is not what we see, usually.”

'What you're doing is not just performance, you're feeling it'

As part of Deepa Mehta's process as a director, she conducts intensive workshops for all the actors, with other members of the crew as well, including Siân Heder who wrote the script with Alan Yang.

“The workshop that I do is based on something called the Natya Shastra, which is one of the oldest books on dramaturgy ever written,...it was written in India and it is about, what is the process of drama?" Mehta explained. "It's based... on, how do you get to perform, how do you understand your character?"

"[The workshops] are about discovery of character, not about lines, but understanding relationships with each other, with yourself, where you want to go, and just explore the arcs of your own character... We had time to explore nuance, a subtle movement, a thoughtful pause, why it's there,...what you're doing is not just performance, you're feeling it."

Mehta added that what makes Little America unique is that its creators "have the guts" to "break stereotypes."

“Don't assume that because I'm from India, in a certain part of India, I can behave a certain way," Mehta said. "Don't have assumptions."

"So to break stereotypes is extremely important, especially in the world that we live in today."