My Time as a Hollywood DEI Failure

Does everyone here have blue eyes? Out of a dozen writers, the only brown eyes were those of the two writers of color—mine and a Black writer’s. What in the Punnett square was this nonsense? 

Blue eyes are a famously recessive gene, yet somehow, blue-eyed white people managed to wildly over-index at this network sitcom. How’d they do that? Seats at a TV writers’ table are objectively impossible to come by. At my new member orientation for the Writers Guild of America, I was told that the average person has a greater chance of winning the World Series than becoming a member of the Writers Guild. Did Hollywood have some kind of secret program for eye color “diversity” that I didn’t know about? Did these blue-eyed people call themselves eyes of color (EOC)?

When I arrived at my new job that morning, I had my first run-in with coworkers just outside my office door. An older man and a younger woman were having a boisterous conversation. I stopped to introduce myself, but they were laughing so hard they didn’t acknowledge me, so I kept walking. Before I took two steps, the man addressed me mid-laugh: “Hey, I just complimented her shirt! Uh-oh! Is that okay? Are you going to report me to HR?” 

They erupted in laughter. Not even a knowing glance from the younger woman.

I think he wanted me to “yes, and” his “joke,” but I didn’t find it funny. This was at the height of the #MeToo movement, so it threw me off. I said, “What?” He repeated himself. All I could muster was a half-hearted chuckle.

Sigh. This was not a good sign.

It was tough not to feel like the new kid at school. I was the only new blood for season eight of this well-oiled machine, one of the last old-school family sitcoms still standing. The showrunner allowed me to start a week later than everyone else, so I could honor a couple of out-of-town stand-up gigs. Before the job even started, I was out of step with the group.

I got the job because the showrunner, the head writer who also runs the entire production and its budget, wanted an Asian American voice like mine to write for the new Hong Kong exchange student character. During the previous season, he had me read scripts as a “sensitivity reader” and cultural consultant because respected Asian American community members in entertainment recommended me. So the upgrade to a full-time staff writing job felt like a tremendous opportunity.

But I almost didn’t say yes to the offer, even though thousands of people would’ve killed for a seat at the writers’ table. The show’s star was a conservative American, red-state darling who loved to use the words “Nancy Pelosi” as a punchline. I was a fan of live-audience multicamera sitcoms, but the star’s point of view felt so far away from who I was—a Taiwanese immigrant woman who had once started a socialist collective. Could I write from his perspective? I weighed the benefits of signing on for 22 episodes and nine months of my life: I’d get paid a hefty bit of money, be home enough to keep my plants alive, and learn from veteran sitcom writers who made all the shows I grew up watching—shows that taught five-year-old immigrant Jenny how to speak English—while eating an unlimited supply of Trader Joe’s trail mix. Fuck it. I said yes. How bad could it be?

We broke for lunch, and like any new kid, I got a little nervous. Where do I go? Who do I hang with? I could’ve easily locked myself away in my office. Mercifully, in a room dominated by white-haired, executive producer–level boomers—the Old Heads—a handful of the younger writers invited me to their lunch table. That felt nice.

The lunch crew ate on the narrow second-floor balcony of our Spanish-style office—a balcony so narrow, the long table forced everyone to sit side by side, facing outward like it was the Last Supper. But when I got back with my sandwich that first day, the table was packed. Apparently, Jesus did not have room for a 13th apostle. 

Oh, crap. It was too crowded. “I’ll just eat inside.” “No,” they insisted. “It’ll be fine.” A coworker rolled out an office chair for me. With no room at the long table, I ate with my food on my lap. 

 

Later that afternoon, the boss sent me to the B room, also known as the joke room—a breakout room where writers pitch alternative jokes for lines that need to be funnier in the script. It was just the four of us—the older guy and the young woman from the weird HR “joke” in the morning. Great. Plus the top Old Head of the B room.

They asked me a couple of questions about other jobs I’d had. I worked on a late-night talk show. I’m a stand-up comedian. Crickets. They were sizing me up, and I did not impress them. The silence felt like tension. Did they even want me to be there? Was I imagining this? 

I sat and listened while they went over the script page we needed to “punch up” to be funnier. Despite the advice I’d digested from dozens of TV writers’ podcasts and panels to “shut the fuck up and listen when you’re a new writer,” I said something. Emphasis on “something,” because it was definitely not a joke pitch, which should be the only reason you utter a word while the room is pitching jokes. My “something” was a series of mumbles that required repeating and clarification until I didn’t even know what I was saying, and the silence in the room was heavy enough to bury me deep inside a hole. 

I ended that first day feeling like a total loser. What can I say? I was a noob. I couldn’t control my lack of experience or the awkward feeling in the writers’ room. But the one thing I could control was rectifying the lunch seating. My solution: an unused small wooden folding table and a lightweight plastic folding chair I had in storage.

The next day, I arrived at work early enough to unload the furniture. The square tabletop fit perfectly. Boom. Enough space for everyone to eat at the table without knocking elbows. The symbolism of this moment was not lost on me. I got a seat at the table, but I had to bring the table myself. 

I barely held on to that job. My first foray into sitcom writing was such a terrible foot forward that not long into the season, the top Old Head of the B room had to have a one-on-one chat with me. He told me that I needed to do better, I didn’t need to talk “just to talk,” and it was okay to just listen until I had something to contribute. I was put on notice. As much as I tried not to, I teared up. Was I not good enough for this job? I felt like a DEI failure.

Later in the season, I learned that I was not imagining the tension. I was not what the staff wanted in a new hire. At one point, the top Old Head mentioned to a group of us that our script coordinator, a hard-working white guy who took the notes in the writers’ room, was a really good writer and could easily be hired as a staff writer. The Old Head turned to make direct eye contact with me and said something like, “But someone else got the job.” There was a smattering of tense chuckles. All I could do was shrug, pretend to leave my seat, and joke, “I guess I’ll see myself out.”

I don’t know how, but I managed to keep the job. And color me even more surprised when my contract was renewed for the next and final season of the show. That gave me enough time to get to know everyone, learn about their prior relationships and prejudices so that I could slowly, glacially find my place in the room. I could never be the funniest in the room, but when I could, I helped to pitch funny character traits or story moves. 

The irony is that I was hired to write for a fictional exchange student while I was on my own foreign exchange. I was an unwelcome resident in the country of Richwhitemaleveterancomedywriterstan. In Richwhitemaleveterancomedywriterstan, network-mandated sexual harassment trainings were one big heckling session of the poor HR guy who just needed to get through his spiel. In Richwhitemaleveterancomedywriterstan, discussing the news of the Atlanta spa shootings in our Zoom writers’ room meant that I had to stop myself from wiping my tears so no one could see how upset I was. One of the Old Heads said they didn’t think it was about racism. He insisted it was about this white boy’s Christian beliefs and shame around his own sexual desires. In one of my rare chime-ins, I pushed back and said that it was a hate crime, but he doubled down. A few days later, he apologized to me via email. The Old Head’s daughter, the younger woman who was a part of that HR “joke” from my first day on the job, noticed I was upset and encouraged her dad to apologize to me. 

Richwhitemaleveterancomedywriterstan was fine to visit, I guess. But I wouldn’t move there.

What bummed me out the most was that I felt so unwelcome and out of step that I was only able to show up as a fraction of my funny self. It was my first scripted job, and as a recovering rule follower and “good girl,” my survival instinct was to get smaller. I stayed quiet and kept my thoughts to myself. If I was true to myself on that first day when the Old Head asked if I would report him to HR, I would’ve said: “It depends. Is this a pattern of behavior that has made her feel uncomfortable? What’s the history of your relationship? Have you crossed the line before? If so, yes. If not, I’d still report you to the joke police for not being funny.” But the space I took was what little they offered me, and I didn’t feel like I had the right to take more. 

Don’t get me wrong; the experience was not all bad. The job paid me well for my time, provided steady income during the first year of the pandemic, taught me so much about comedy writing, and gave me many fun moments and camaraderie with some of the writers. The showrunner was very compassionate when it came to our work schedules and time off. I gained the experience and confidence to take on more writing jobs. Mercifully, those jobs were infinitely more immigrant, Brown, and Asian, and I showed up more fully as myself and made meaningful contributions.

I appreciated that my first sitcom job tried to do their part to embrace diversity despite being a “red-state show.” They fought to add a Chinese character and to hire an Asian American writer like me—actions that were not required by any show-business overlord. But the systemic and deep-seated culture of white-supremacy capitalism in Hollywood can’t be taken down with a couple of diversity hires and some culturally sensitive jokes about a Hong Kong exchange student. Those jokes were buried inside a TV show whose entire premise was about the grievance of a conservative white guy who hated that he was the only “real man” left in America.

The DEI failure isn’t me; it’s Hollywood. We are in a time of tremendous contraction and upheaval in media and entertainment, coupled with a hard shift to right-wing politics. Industry trades have headlines like “DEI Is Disappearing”¹ and “Diversity Fatigue.”² Media companies are treating reductions in DEI efforts as necessary cuts—collateral and acceptable damage. For them, it’s not politics; the zeitgeist has changed. It’s just business. At least they can pat themselves on their backs for having given DEI the “old college try” (sarcasm intended).

I left that folding table there when the show ended. I didn’t want to take home a physical reminder of being the unwelcome guest. Real inclusion is expanding our definition of what qualifies someone for the work, while also shifting the culture of the workplace to account for the diversity. It’s not just about seeing the variety of skin colors on-screen or even in the writers’ room. DEI includes diversifying how the art is made, how we treat each other and talk to one another, and how those in power change practices that used to only serve and comfort themselves. Otherwise, in our efforts to be seen at a table that offers little space for us to be ourselves, we risk losing the essence of what got us there in the first place.