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AIPROPX ReportIndieWire · 38m ago
SubwayTakes’ Host Kareem Rahma Did Not Need to ‘Get Off the Internet’ to Get to the Emmys
"It's crazy, but every once in a while it's a hit right away," said " SubwayTakes " co-creator and host Kareem Rahma , during a recent conversation with IndieWire over Zoom. In fact, his Emmy-nominated Short Form series had a proven audience before it even premiered. "I posted a trailer and the trailer got a million views. And I go, 'Oh my God.' Trailers don't get a million views, because they're trailers ," he said with disdain. "And then the first episode got two or three million views. And I was shocked and really scared and really nervous because I was like, 'Oh no, I'm not prepared for this.'" Related Stories We Pick Which Series Will Win and/or Should Win at the 2026 Primetime Emmys Martin Short Explains Why He's Never Seen a Shrink: 'It's OK to Be Sad'
Rahma has been open about how the concept of him asking a person seated next to him on the subway to present and defend a unique and/or controversial opinion stemmed from looking for something more economical, after his original hit webseries "Keep the Meter Running," where he would pay taxi drivers to give him their version of a tour through their city, became too costly. With "SubwayTakes," all he needed were cameras, microphones, a fare card, and open seating to shoot an episode.
But while there are plenty of other webseries in the same realm, many of them also becoming coveted stops on a celebrity press tour, a major innovation he can take credit for is his adherence to the shortform medium from Day One. "The short form unscripted vertical video asset is the episode. It's not a lift. It's not a clip. There's no other episode. This is the episode," said Rahma. "And that was really helpful because I didn't have to do the work of telling people to go watch the full length or worry about editing the full length, and editing the little thing, and then worry about doing clips. And it made me focus on making the highest quality single piece of content. Not even having to worry about distribution or where to put it and re-edit it."
The actual greatest challenge he's faced so far in producing SubwayTakes was how to go by expanding the format. The longer episodes featuring celebrity interviews, now called "SubwayTakes Uncut," started "based on the fact that I had access to all these amazing celebrities and people that I've always wanted to meet," he said. "I'm already spending an hour with them, so I may as well record the whole time."
The first official "Uncut" guest was singer-songwriter Halsey, with the thought that Rahma could just keep interviewing her after she'd gotten through sharing and defending her take. In practice, "the production was a mess because we didn't know what we were doing for long form. It was the first long form shoot,' said Rahma. "We're on the subway. We're also like, 'Oh, we have to get off the train now. So do we keep shooting?' 'Yes, keep the cameras rolling.' Then we're crossing the street going back on the subway. It was all over the place."
It was clear lack of format was an issue, so the next thought with guest Ramy Youssef was to have the comedian take Rahma to his favorite restaurant after they wrap the "take" segment — a soft version of "Keep the Meter Running" that still proved to not be economical.
"We almost shut 'Uncut' down because we did at least 10 episodes and it wasn't working and it's way more expensive to produce and it cost thousands of dollars every time. And we're like, 'Do we just end this?'" But much to the surprise of Rahma, who compared the interview to "riding a wild horse," and said that during the shoot he began thinking to himself "I don't know if I'm good at this. . . I should probably quit," the guest who was a turning point for the show was comedian Bill Burr.
"He is the first ['Uncut'] episode that did extremely well. I think he got a million views. And the learning was that people are there for the takes, and he has a lot of them. So the show switched to being this format that's like 'Bill Burr discusses his five most controversial takes.' That's the show. It's now take after take after take after take."
The experience was another reminder of the lesson he had learned from day one: the audience is drawn in by the takes more so than the fame level of the guests. Rahma breaks down the demographics of who is invited on "SubwayTakes" as 95 percent unknowns. Though he rejects the label of "journalist" ("I see myself as a clown and a jester"), the host likens his show to a magazine when talking about how he makes creative decisions for it. "That's how I look at the short form videos. I'm like, 'Ok, I'm the editor-in-chief of a magazine. Who's on the cover tomorrow?,'" he said, choosing from "hundreds of independent comedians and writers and journalists and authors and filmmakers and actors and clowns and random people that make it on the show, cab drivers, whatever."
Looking at the programming calendar, Rahma asks "'What do we need more of? What do we need less of? What can we take a break from?' And that's both take-wise as well as diversity-wise and gender-wise and religion-wise and industry-wise. I am trying to make it a melting pot of a show." It also speaks to how he's adopted much of the ethics that journalists abide by.
"I'm very particular about the guests I book, and I wouldn't call myself an activist at all in the same way that I wouldn't call myself a journalist, but I do believe that there's a right and a wrong, and I think that the internet is a cesspool of people who are wrong. And it's not even a matter of opinion. It's a matter of fact. So for me, I'm not booking those people. And that's just the way the cookie crumbles," said Rahma. "They can definitely have different political viewpoints, but they certainly can't be bigots or genocide enablers or outspoken about anti-gay rights or Islamophobic or antisemitic. I'm not having those people on the show. That's not something I'm willing to do. And there are other shows that do that, but I'm not doing that....
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