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Kal Penn tweets excerpts from the racist audition scripts he got at the beginning of his career

Take note, Hollywood.

 

Christine Friar

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Posted on Mar 15, 2017   Updated on May 24, 2021, 8:38 pm CDT

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.

As Penn dug through whatever file cabinet the scripts were in, the memories all seemed to be rushing back to him.

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.

Often, the characters weren’t delivering jokes—their accents and culture were the joke.

And other times they weren’t named.

Or if they were named…

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 24Buffy, 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.

Take note, Hollywood.

H/T Buzzfeed

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*First Published: Mar 15, 2017, 4:25 pm CDT