* * *
As a young man of color who knew nobody in Hollywood and whose Indian American peers at college chastised him for pursuing a career in the arts, I viewed my situation with the internship less as someone being taken advantage of and more as someone who was gaming the system with skill and sacrifice. Of course interns in Hollywood were a relatively homogeneous group: If you were lucky enough to know the right people in the first place, you still had to be able to afford working full-time for free. Now that I was in charge of hiring CM’s interns, I could at least try to eliminate nepotism from the list of qualifications. I did an exhaustive search for the best and most diverse applicants, not just the ones who had family or school connections. My short list of candidates was an extremely talented group from around the country, including people from different demographic groups who didn’t all come from Los Angeles or attend fancy private schools.
I was proud of this.
The last time I had gone through a pile of applicants with CM was when I brought him that stack of headshots （Asians don’t watch movies!）。 This time, he leafed through the prospective interns, pausing at the third, fourth, and fifth résumés. I wondered what the issue was now. “Why are there chicks?” he asked. He could tell the question confused me, so he repeated it. “Kal, why are there chicks in this file?”
Was this dude kidding me with this shit?
“Every human in the pile is an exceptionally talented film student. Do you not hire women?”
“Nope. No chicks. You’ve heard me talk, right? I’m not trying to get sued for my filthy mouth. Don’t hire any chicks.” Then, with his 1930s smirk and wink, “Unless they’re hot. Bring the hot ones in for an interview.” I walked back to my desk, wanting to throw up.
The misogyny was inexcusable, and I didn’t know how to handle it—they don’t teach you that in film school, and there were no articles about it in those days. This terrible behavior also struck me as self-defeating to his company’s entire bottom line. CM’s “don’t hire women because I’m an asshole” policy eliminated half the talent pool. He was writing off insanely creative people—people who could help him move beyond “pop” and into substance. And it was all because he didn’t want to manage his own terrible sexist behavior in the workplace.
I should have fought him way harder than I did. At the time, I honestly wasn’t sure how. If I went to the head of HR to file a complaint, Captain Moneybags would find out—the guy I would have complained to was friends with his rich dad. I continued to make my point, sending him the most qualified applicants of every gender and background in the prospective intern piles. I wasn’t going to take any qualified women or people of color out of the running, even if he eventually did. What was he going to do, fire me? I was already too valuable to his empire.
* * *
I’d like to think that things have gotten better today, that people like CM are a rarer breed than they were when I was first getting into the industry. And I attribute this in large part to immense public pressure on the entertainment industry to change, and the high degree of social consciousness in the generations that followed mine. For all the crap everyone gives millennials for quitting jobs too soon and expecting sudden promotions without paying their dues, at least they and the Gen Zers don’t seem to tolerate the bullshit we had to. Racist, misogynistic behavior no longer has to be an acceptable par for the course. That gives me a lot of hope.
That said, we’re still not where we need to be. We must continue finding ways to expand the pipeline into workplaces in and out of Hollywood. When given a chance, talent and hard work will generally win out over misogyny and hackery, but only when the pool of truly qualified candidates isn’t restricted to those with contacts or money （or those of a certain gender, ethnicity, race, or identity）。
Want to know the best evidence I have that money and connections aren’t enough to keep you in business? It’s Captain Moneybags himself. Within three years of opening his daddy-trust-funded production company, he had produced only one project: a straight-to-DVD movie that took a massive loss. He eventually closed up shop and left the entertainment industry forever. The last I heard he was a struggling real estate agent in Florida.
I guess nobody told him that Asians buy houses.
1?The reason I failed one of the two times.
2?Except not irritating.
3?For comparison, here’s a more recent statistic: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rosaescandon/2020/05/22/asian-american-consumer-market-is-now-12-trillion-and-what-that-means-for-digital-brands/.
4?This is how you word things politely in a professional environment.
5?I’m telling you, they love it when you talk like they do.
CHAPTER SEVEN AUDITIONING TO BE LATINO
Captain Moneybags wasn’t the only one with weird ideas about people from Middle America. Now that I was going on professional auditions, I learned that Hollywood can be a place that sees you in ways you don’t see yourself. Indians wear turbans and are terrorists. White southerners are slow and unintelligent. East Asians are timid, although they’ll kick your ass at martial arts. Hispanic people are all Latinos, all Latinos are Mexicans, and all Mexicans make very passionate love, except when they’re too busy being lazy. Makes perfect sense.
Against all of that, in February of my fourth year of college, I got a call to audition for a lead role in an ABC television pilot called Brookfield, created by future O.C. and Gossip Girl scribe Josh Schwartz. Set in a New England boarding school, the character I auditioned for was a half-Indian, half-Jewish bully named Kumar Zimmerman. This was a） the first Kumar I ever auditioned for and b） closer than I ever thought I’d come to entering a private school world like Holden Caulfield’s.
I booked the part, quit my “job” with Captain Moneybags, dropped out of UCLA for the spring quarter, resigned as a Resident Assistant, and flew to Greensboro, North Carolina, where we filmed for a few weeks. While the pilot ultimately didn’t get picked up to series, shooting it was an eye-opening introduction to what might be possible in my career: well-fleshed out lead roles written by smart, funny people. The month I spent on location with such kind, focused people totally solidified that this was the dream I wanted to pursue: being in front of the camera, storytelling. Barbara assured me that booking the part on Brookfield would lead to a higher level of meetings and auditions that I might not have gotten if I hadn’t been on an ABC pilot （even a failed one）。 I returned to finish college, eager to see what came next.
* * *
The reality by August 2000—a few months after my festive college graduation, which Mom, Dad, and Pulin flew out from New Jersey for—was that I had gone out for almost no new auditions. Barbara was successful in setting up just one general meeting. When she pitched me for projects, she was often told, “He was very good in Brookfield but I mean, Kumar Zimmerman? Who else could have played that part?,” as if my talent was negated by the character’s ethnicity （and mine）。
Any momentum I expected from Brookfield turned out not to exist. The single meeting Barbara was able to arrange was with a vice president of casting at NBC named Sonia Nikore, who not so incidentally was the only Indian American network executive I was aware of. Our meeting at NBC studios was cordial. Sonia asked about my background and training. She told me a bit about the network and how they discover new talent. “How have you found it so far,” she asked, “being Indian American in Hollywood?”