The television industry is just as unfair as the film industry, it seems. In a recent profile with Elle, Mindy Kaling revealed that during the early days of The Office, she was told by the Television Academy after the show’s Best Comedy Series nomination that they were going to cut her from the list of producers because there were too many on the list. This meant that the sole woman of color on the team would not be eligible for an Emmy with the rest of the producers.
“They made me, not any of the other producers, fill out a whole form and write an essay about all my contributions as a writer and a producer,” Kaling told Elle during the interview. “I had to get letters from all the other male, white producers saying that I had contributed, when my actual record stood for itself.”
The Television Academy has responded, saying, “No one person was singled out. There was an increasing concern years ago regarding the number of performers and writers seeking producer credits. At the time the Producers Guild worked with the Television Academy to correctly vet producer eligibility.”
Kaling responded to their statement via Twitter:
Respectfully, the Academy’s statement doesn’t make any sense. I *was* singled out. There were other Office writer-performer-producers who were NOT cut from the list. Just me. The most junior person, and woman of color. Easiest to dismiss. Just sayin’. https://t.co/frT2pQUfLF
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) October 9, 2019
I’ve never wanted to bring up that incident because The Office was one of the greatest creative experiences of my life, and who would want to have an adversarial relationship with the Academy, who has the ongoing power to enhance our careers with awards? (1)
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) October 9, 2019
(2) But I worked so hard and it was humiliating. I had written so many episodes, put in so much time in the editing room, just to have the Academy discard it because they couldn’t fathom I was capable of doing it all. Thankfully I was rescued by my friends, the other producers.
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) October 9, 2019
(3) The point is, we shouldn’t have be bailed out because of the kindness our more powerful white male colleagues. Not mentioning it seemed like glossing over my story. This was like ten years ago. Maybe it wouldn’t happen now. But it happened to me.
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) October 9, 2019
This shows a huge problem within the television industry. Despite the role Kaling played in The Office‘s success, she was singled out and almost was ineligible for any Emmys that the show could win. She deserved to be recognized for her work on the series, period. There’s no if, ands, or buts about it. She deserved the awards recognition for her contributions. The Academy targeting The Office’s only woman of color producer is not acceptable.
Kaling says maybe this wouldn’t happen now, but the Emmys still see awards going to mostly white winners. Award shows in general tend to give awards to mostly white, many times male artists, and we need to possibly reconsider letting award shows define what is good television and film if they’re only going to honor a small portion of the talent pool or, in this case, deliberately excluding women of color from consideration.
(via Elle, image: Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)
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