Actor-turned-Obama-staffer Kal Penn took to Twitter this week to share some of the audition scripts he was sent at the beginning of his career. Unfortunately, a lot of them were racist.
Penn is American and probably best known for his roles as a doctor on House and a stoner teen in the Harold and Kumar series, but because of his South Asian descent, he was sent a lot of casting materials for roles like “Ghandi lookalike” and “snake charmer” at the beginning of his career.
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
As Penn dug through whatever file cabinet the scripts were in, the memories all seemed to be rushing back to him.
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
One of the main problems Penn recalls running into is not being allowed to speak with his American accent when auditioning. Like for this part, on Jenji Kohan’s The Stones.
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
Often, the characters weren’t delivering jokes—their accents and culture were the joke.
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
And other times they weren’t named.
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
Or if they were named…
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
Penn wrapped the thread up with a shoutout to shows he auditioned and worked for over the years that actually took the time to write characters for South Asian actors to play, not stereotypes. He specifically commends 24, Buffy, and Angel for staffing “really smart, creative people who didn’t have to use external things to mask subpar writing.”
And finally, he shouted out House creator David Shore, for using gender and race-blind casting on his shows when he can.
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
Take note, Hollywood.
H/T Buzzfeed
