Behind the brands with BBC Young Reporter: What's it like to work on Man like Mobeen?

Dúaa Karim

Hi, my name's Dúaa Karim and I play the role of Aqsa in Man Like Mobeen.

So, there are a lot of people who work behind the scenes. For example, the lighting crew, directors, producers and many more. In my opinion, without the people who work behind the scenes, there would be no show and they're definitely the most hard workingpeople I've ever come across.

So, Ahmed Roy is a location manager. He would sort out all the locations for us to film at. Andy is the writer for Man Like Mobeen along with Guz. He writes the scripts for the show and he is, he is just amazing. He is literally like family to me. Wajeeha was a trainee producer – she was shadowing Gill who was a producer for Man Like Mobeen and she's absolutely amazing and hilarious.

If I was starting out again, I would definitely consider going into acting school for the experience as I feel that I have gained, I would have gained a lot of knowledge. I feel that, if you are a lot younger, like, eleven-year-olds, then join drama groups outside of school, maybe, that would help a lot with your confidence and then, when you're older, getting into it would be a lot easier for you to handle.

Andy Milligan

My name's Andy Milligan and, along with Guz Khan, I am the writer of Man Like Mobeen.

Yeah, I think at school I was someone who was good at what I was good at and I was really bad at what I was bad at. So, I was always good at stuff like English and History and I was not so great at Science, Maths and stuff like that. So, I did my GCSEs, I got five GCSEs. Then I did A-levels in English and History and got my A-levels and then I did a degree in English and Film Studies. But it's not vital by any stretch of the imagination. That's the important thing to say about being a writer. You just have to, like, love writing and be persistent but you don't need to be super successful academically. Everyone's got different routes into it.

I worked in TV, I worked my way up like a lot of people do. I was a runner and I made tea and then I was a researcher and a producer and I originally worked in kind of entertainment television, and then I got to like my mid-twenties I decided that I needed to try and be a full-time writer. I was a producer by this point. By that time, I had a few contacts that I knew so I would get hired on things at first just writing links for entertainment shows and stuff like that. Shortly after that I wrote my first kind of like "spec-script" – my first script that, you know, no one had asked for, but that I needed a have as a calling card. I sent that out, I got an agent and things just grew from there really, but it took a long time and a lot of perseverance.

I love everything about Man Like Mobeen because I feel like we're really lucky to make it. But, in terms of what I enjoy the most, there's a period of about two weeks before filming, me and him sit in a room for a week or so and just go through every script and every line and every joke and see how we can make it better and funnier. I think that's probably my favourite part of the process because a) the show gets a lot better, hopefully, when we do that and b) you're just sitting in a room with a mate trying to make each other laugh and that is when writing is brilliant because there's a big element of writing, if you're write on your own a lot as I do, then you know it's quite a solitary discipline sometimes. But, if you're in a room with another person talking, then it feels like fun so that's my favourite part of the process, but I feel very grateful for the whole experience, really. I think we're really lucky to get to make the show.

There's no reason not to just get going and get it out there and writing is one of those things that a lot of people talk about. You know a lot of people say: "I'd like to be a writer" or "I wanna be a writer" or "maybe I could be a writer". But you just gotta do it, otherwise you're just a person saying you want to a writer and that's not a job.

So, yeah. Give it a shot would be my main advice.

Ahmed Roy

So, my name is Ahmed Roy and I'm from Birmingham.

I've been to a different school nearly every year of my life and in different countries as well. So, my school life was insane and so, by the end of it, I'd learnt to make friends so fast because every year I had to start again. And I was able to just adapt to situations really, really quickly.

So, with Man Like Mobeen it's very lucky because I'm from Small Heath where the show is based and a lot of it’s shot there as well. Credit to them for recognising that if we had somebody on the inside, helping us with this show, it will probably be more successful.

They're responsible for overseeing anything to do with locations in a film, so that means wherever the script mentions, if the script says "Italian restaurant" or "street shot" or something they have to follow the brief, the description of the place, go out and scout the place and then facilitate it for the crew to come there and film – and that means every aspect of it. That means you're bringing 50 people, give or take, to a place to take over this space entirely. It has to be safe, it has to be comfortable and it has to have a lot of parts in it. Like we're talking toilets, we're talking green rooms where the actors are going to sit, where's everybody going to park. So, yeah. But then, the good thing is, once you've got everybody in that's when it's sort of downtime for you now until lunchtime, then it all kicks off again. And then you're there till the end of the day, basically, reset the whole place to make it look like how you found it. And then you've got to do it all again the next day.

There's no one way to do this, so anybody else, the way somebody reached their goal, or if, you know, if they got a job or whatever, their path is not gonna be the same as your path. As long as you know where you want to end up, just make your own path because there is no straightforward way of doing, getting into this industry. The other thing I'd say is play to your strengths and always rise to the occasion. But yeah, just take your time and be patient.

Wajeeha Sheikh

My name is Wajeeha and I was the trainee producer on series three of Man Like Mobeen.

I was a good student at school. I liked school a lot. But then I found the jump from GCSEs to A-levels really hard. But, like, I still had English Literature that I took and always loved that and I'd always thrived in that subject anyway. And that's the one that I ended up studying at university.

I saw a retweet of the Man Like Mobeen trainee scheme and I looked at it and I thought "oh, that's good!" but then I didn't think itwas for me because it doesn't really seem like something I would do. And I remember speaking to all of my friends and they were like "but why not?" And I was like "yeah, why not? Why not me?" So, then I applied and then I did get a call the following day, so I was very blessed. And now I'm here.

I remember looking at call sheet and it was like "yeah, so you've got to be here at like 7am". And I was like "oh my god! 7am?!". And you think getting up for school is bad, but not like this – this was bad, this was like leaving your house at six o'clock in the morning to make sure you're there on time. And it's fine because you get breakfast which is great but it was horrible at the start but then you get used to it.

My, my role and the trainee director’s role was very much so shadowing the director and producer. So, during shoot we were at the monitors standing and having a lot of feedback chit chat, like watching "how is this going?" "what do you think of this theme?" We covered a lot of stuff. We weren't just there to like shadow, we were also there to pick up the slack. So doing runs to Tesco to go and get things to make the dressing rooms looks nice and bit more comfortable. That kind of stuff as well. I would speak to everyone on set and I was able to learn something from every conversation that I had. So, you start at seven, and then you rap at like six or seven. I look back and I'm like "oh my god, you did that for so long".

So, if you're between the ages of 11 to 18, you have so much time. Don't think that you get to your GCSEs and you've chosen all of these subjects and therefore you can't do anything creative or be in the creative industry. You might have been set on Law, on Medicine, Engineering, all of that kind of stuff. You are 100% entitled to change your mind because there are people that did. I did several times. I change my mind all the time and I've ended up here.