Mindy Kaling felt that only she could tell the story of ‘Late Night’.
The actress, writer and producer was extremely passionate about her new movie, which stars Dame Emma Thompson as talk show host Katherine Newbury who hires Kaling’s character Molly as a diversity hire to join her entirely white male writing staff, because it is something she has experiences in real life.
She told The Hollywood Reporter: "I wanted to tell this story because I felt like it was a story that only I could . I felt like if you’re lucky enough to find a story that really resonates for you and excites you and [you] might be one of the only people who can do it, you should do it. So I was like, ‘Oh this is great,’ and the writing of it was so fun and easy."
Co-star Ike Barinholtz says Hollywood is making progress and five or 10 years ago the movie would have featured a male lead rather than a female one.
He explained: "Five years ago this movie is made, the Emma character is played by Robert De Niro or something. For Mindy to be able to write it with this vision of this young woman trying to break into this older woman is a story that I don’t know, it wouldn’t have caught on as easily 10 years ago."
Mindy previously 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 talk show 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’s personal connection to Late Night
