Revenge must feel sweet for Mindy Kaling. Fourteen years ago, she was the “diversity hire” – the first female writer and person of colour on the US version of The Office – and pretty much American comedy as a whole. Now Kaling brings us Late Night, written by and starring herself as Molly, the only female writer and person of colour on Emma Thompson’s ailing late-night TV show; “a vibrant splash of colour on the grey canvas of our writing staff,” as Molly puts it.
Of all genres, US late-night TV remains dominated by male writers and hosts. Late Night mines Kaling’s early career for laughs but it’s clearly born of painful experience; she is alienated, humiliated, resented and disrespected. It was a similar for Tina Fey with her sitcom 30 Rock, feeding off her experience as the first female head writer on Saturday Night Live.
In Late Night, Thompson’s character has anxieties of being replaced by a younger male; not an entirely fictional notion when one thinks of current hosts such as Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel. Busy Philipps’s Busy Tonight had an 89% female team and was described by its host as “by women, for women”, but was cancelled after one season. Sarah Silverman’s I Love You America and The Break With Michelle Wolf suffered similar fates. A common complaint is that these women are not given the same opportunity as their male counterparts to build an audience. Another is that the media is still blind to its bias: last year, Philipps lambasted Variety for holding a “Night in the Writers’ Room” event that featured 11 men and one woman.
In a 2010 panel discussion, Samantha Bee, currently the only woman fronting a US late-night TV show, contrasted the nurturing spirit of her all-female improv troupe in Canada with the more ruthless approach she felt in the writers’ room of The Daily Show. “It wasn’t that it was a male-dominated culture,” she said, “but it’s a daily show, and if it’s not immediately funny, it’s not going to go anywhere.” She suggested that many women also didn’t believe they could get those writing jobs, so didn’t even apply. Its head writer David Javerbaum had another explanation: “The problem is, we hire women but they get lost on the way to the studio driving.” It’s comedy, see? Although he might not make that joke today.
For all the insight that Kaling puts into Late Night, it doesn’t massively depart from expectations in terms of our hero’s journey. Diversity triumphs; even if it’s in the service of Thompson’s career. But Late Night is both a record of how bad things were and how much they have moved on. Hopefully no one will need to make a movie on this subject again. It would be fitting for Kaling to have the last laugh.
Late Night is out in cinemas from 7 June
