“I remember vividly what it’s like to be the only woman, the only person of color in the writer’s room, like it was yesterday,” said Mindy Kaling in an interview with USA Today about her new film, Late Night, and the inspiration she drew from her own experiences.
Molly Patel, played by Kaling, is hired onto Katherine Newbury’s (Emma Thompson) late-night show for one reason—because she’s a woman. She’s the “diversity hire.”
“We make no bones about it,” Kaling said in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment. “She was strictly hired for that reason.” Kaling said she wanted to talk about diversity hires in an open way because she was herself one for The Office. Kaling was the first woman on the show’s writing staff, and debuted as Kelly Kapoor on the second episode, titled Diversity Day.
“I came up through the NBC diversity hiring [program]. And I used to be so embarrassed about that. … I wouldn’t tell anyone. … The other writers will think that was the only reason I was hired.”
On top of embarrassment, Kaling felt a burden of representation in the writing room. “If one of the other writers who is White and male has a bad day…you don’t think that’s a reflection of all White men,” Kaling said in her USA Today interview. “I had this huge fear of, ‘God, I’m representing so many millions of people here by my sheer presence, and if I do not do well, it’s a reflection on my race and my gender.’”
Kaling said she now realizes coming through a diversity hiring program is nothing to be ashamed of. “This really great organization was giving me something that other people have born access to,” she said in her Yahoo Entertainment interview. “I won’t ever be embarrassed about it again.”
These days, Kaling said she actually relates more with Thompson’s character in the movie, being an employer herself. She told USA Today that her writers’ rooms are collaborative and multicultural. Instead of finding talent through diversity programs, she hires aspiring female writers that she’ll mentor and promote.
Late Night is directed by Nisha Ganatra, who was herself a diversity hire on The Mindy Project directing the episode Fertility Bites. “There’s an Indian American writer and an Indian American director,” Ganatra said, “and we both work in the space of comedy. Sadly, it’s kind of radical to make a film together.”
Late Night premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019. Amazon Studios acquired distribution rights for $13 million, the largest sum paid for U.S.-only distribution at the festival, according to reporting by Deadline. The film is scheduled to be released in the United States on June 7, 2019.
AsAmNews has Asian America in its heart. We’re an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. Check out our Twitter feed and Facebook page for more content. Please consider interning, joining our staff or submitting a story.
