Mindy Kaling felt "embarrassed" about being a diversity hire.
The 39-year-old actress first found fame in the US version of sitcom ‘The Office’, where she first was the first woman of colour to join the writing team, and has revealed she wasn’t comfortable with her position.
Speaking about the role, Mindy told The Guardian newspaper: "And for a long time I was really embarrassed about that. No one [on ‘The Office’] said anything to me about it, but they all knew and I was acutely aware of that. It took me a while to realise that I was just getting the access other people had because of who they knew."
The mother-of-one is featuring in upcoming film ‘Late Night’ alongside Dame Emma Thompson, where she is hired as a writer because she is a woman of colour and she has revealed that when she first got into show business she was shocked by the blatant lack of diversity she saw in the workplace.
She said: "When we started on the film, I thought, OK, things are different now. But then I met the first African American female writer on a late-night talkshow and she was only hired in, I think, 2016. And these shows are mainly made in New York City! I mean, not having an African American woman until 2016 in New York, that’s hard to do."
And Mindy thinks people often only work with others who are the same race as them because people "feel comfortable" with people who look similar to them.
She said: "I think there’s such pressure when you’re creating a show to keep it on the air that people only hire those who they feel comfortable with, and for a lot of people that’s people who look exactly like them."
Mindy Kaling felt ’embarrassed’ about being a diversity hire
