Representation in film and television has come a long, long way in the last decade, but it wasn’t too long ago that diverse actors were only cast as ‘the villain’ or ‘the butt of the joke’.
Reminding us all what so-called diversity looked like in the recent past, Kal Penn – whose parents immigrated to America from India before he was born – has tweeted a series of old scripts to show just what kind of roles he was offered in the early days of his career.
It’s not great reading. Penn found cult fame in the ‘Harold and Kumar‘ series opposite Star Trek‘s John Cho, playing on the Indian-American stereotypes by creating a character that was resisting all of them (and, obviously, getting high as fuck). These days, he appears as speech writer Seth Wright in Netflix‘s other political drama ‘Designated Survivor‘.
Found a bunch of old scripts from some of my first years trying to be an actor. pic.twitter.com/GydOwlUKGW
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Jeez I remember this one! They were awful. “Can you make his accent a little more AUTHENTIC?” That usually meant they wanted Apu pic.twitter.com/3F5XRORO3n
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
He blasts another show for declining to give his character an official name in the script, but later making a gag about it.
Ha! In this audition for Smart Guy, they didn’t even give the character a name! pic.twitter.com/z2D8E5rx8J
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Oh wait yes they did pic.twitter.com/xwB3qIoXoF
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
He calls out ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch‘ and ‘Kings of Queens‘ for being racially insensitive, but did point out that shows like ‘The Steve Harvey Morning Show‘, ‘Buffy‘, ‘Angel‘ and ‘24‘ had “really smart, creative people who didn’t have to use external things to mask subpar writing.”
Friggin King of Queens man! I used to love that show until I got to audition for it lol pic.twitter.com/2BYu0nnd57
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Sabrina the Teenage Witch! Man. We got INTO it about why he had to have an accent. I’m laughing about it now but they were such dicks ?? pic.twitter.com/kXdHjVsqvT
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
He also praises ‘House‘ creator David Shore (Penn played Dr. Lawrence Kutner in the show for six seasons) for casting “largely colour and gender blind”, pointing out that the ratings certainly didn’t suffer for it.
Also when you cast things like @shorez, largely color & gender blind, it’s more interesting & ratings can look like this. Which is awesome! pic.twitter.com/qr1f7vWASK
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
But yeah. He’s had some absolute shockers in 16-year career.
This was for some project called The Marriage Clause I guess. pic.twitter.com/0yKjepAHqy
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Whoa I remember this! This was one of my first commercials. The makeup people would use Vaseline to get the sweaty unwashed look going pic.twitter.com/X7z4EI4drQ
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
I do not remember this audition except that it was for some shitty MTV show and the big joke was an accent and too much cologne ???? pic.twitter.com/7HZbhQCkaB
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Womp womp pic.twitter.com/fyonwmreBa
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
This was a pilot called The Stones. Tried to convince them to let me speak without an accent & make it funny on the merits (was told no) ?? pic.twitter.com/SuUVYT7rip
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) March 14, 2017
Photo: Designated Survivor.
