Hello to all of you. Welcome back to Top of the Line, IndieWire’s roundup of craft stories. I won’t bother you with how hot it is and what the craft team is doing because we don’t have time for that. But whether you’re looking for the “Hacks” series finale or “The Boys” series finale, we’ve got you covered. We have become lost in the “backroom” and entangled ourselves in the “Cape Fear.” We’ve profiled some “very important people” and some very important 3D printers. Whether you’re looking to hang out with TV’s most beloved Night Shift or have “Euphoria” season 3 spicier than our own Jim Hemphill, there’s plenty of great creative stuff written for you on IndieWire.
But today I’m here to talk about “Subway Takes,” Kareem Rahma’s YouTube series that profiles regular riders and more famous people taking public transit for everything from romance to AI to the social contract surrounding potlucks. Rahma is one of many Internet creators taking more traditional talk and chat show formats to a local level, with increasingly funny and – most importantly – viral results. But it’s also a good blueprint for how to shoot something fast, with a low profile, in fluid situations.
“Subway Takes” looks pretty simple: just some camera setup around Rahma and whoever is her guest, sitting on the train. But I was curious how the show actually got made, entirely in public, and how Rahma refined the charming, simple format over the years and expanded “Subway Takes” to other transit systems in London, Chicago, Berlin, and beyond.
Trains running between Manhattan and Brooklyn between 11am and 2pm are the main answer to the OG NYC “Subway Takes” schedule. The team – which used to be just Rahma and two friends and has now doubled its (still small) footprint to include a rotation of camera crews and producers – wants to provide minimal disruption to regular riders. A low shooting footprint is important – when big personalities, they may have big teams of their own, and that can fill a train car very quickly – as is waiting on cars that are mostly empty so that shooting can give regular riders as much space as possible. As a result, Rahma didn’t have to worry about anyone noticing that she and her team were shooting.
Rahma said, “If someone wants to raise their voice, they raise their voice and I am happy to have them on the show. There is no one who is trying to create ruckus or chaos.” “Unless you’re, like, Cate Blanchett or J.Lo, sometimes you’re mixed in with other people. So I’ll shoot like four friends and then, like, Eric Andre, who is technically a celebrity but is also a peer and is normal, so he comes along with everyone else. We don’t make any special accommodations.” In fact, the charm of watching “Subway Tex” is that anyone and everyone can be on “Subway Tex.”
No matter who the guests are, a trip down the East River gives Rahma more uninterrupted time to soak up their experiences. Like most things, going viral is impossible to engineer. Rahma thought it would be a good idea to interview people in the metro. Or at least, an interesting experiment to try and potentially fail.
“I’m not really working in Hollywood, so let me do this thing that’s probably going to fail,” Rahma told IndieWire. “I actually thought it was a really stupid idea because I had so many of them that I thought, ‘What are the chances that this is good?'”
But the odds were in favor of “Subway Tax.” Rahma believes that there is no small reason for this, the reason being the clever editing that balances the edge of the stage, so to speak, turning a ten or fifteen minute conversation into a reel or short length video. Rahma said, “Our editors create something that feels really simple, really dynamic, really catchy, really fast-paced and at the same time doesn’t feel cheap or sloppy.”
Rahma wants this show to be the most sophisticated series about the stupidest subway ever, as a way to step out and combat the crappy stuff we’re all facing in the year of our Lord 2026. “I think in a world where everything seems fake, and sometimes faked with AI and things like that, to see something so normal and just like real life is a breath of fresh air. You turn on the news, and they’re lying to you. You turn on your social media apps, and those people are lying to you. You watch a video, and you realize it’s fake and they’re lying to you and then you see ‘Subway Takes’ and You say, ‘Well, they’re not lying to me.’ It’s silly, real, fun conversation that’s also smart at the same time,” Rahma said.
The show has become what it is in part because Rahma has evolved as an interviewer between giving opinions to friends, celebrities and random people over and over again. He doesn’t try to think too much about setup, preparation, or his approach to filming, just trying to be a friend to the guests and make them feel comfortable. But now he has had some interviews where he realizes that this could be a very different level of challenge.
Rahma said, “There was an episode with Bill Burr that was really hard for me.” “This guy completely destroyed me in the first 15 seconds; made me feel like I was bad at my job. And then after 10 or 15 minutes I got it back on track, and by the end of it, he was cool and happy and complimented me on my skills. So that was the first time I said, ‘Okay, maybe I have a certain skill that’s developing.’
In which subway does Rahma want to do a sophisticated show about silly scenes next? Rahma said, “I’m really interested in exploring Japan’s weather, but I know their train etiquette is very different from New Yorkers’ train etiquette, so I haven’t explored that. I think South Korea, Seoul, would be really good too. I want to take it to Asia.”
Bullet train takes are probably coming soon, but in the meantime, you can watch “Subway Takes” on YouTube. And we’ll be back next week with another craft newsletter.
