“I’ve definitely had my fair share of stereotypical auditions, but Brookfield got me excited about what might be possible.”
“Glad you have a positive outlook. That’s important.”
“I have to be positive,” I continued. “I know physicality is a factor. Actors lose out on jobs all the time because they’re too tall or too short, too fat or too thin, too attractive or not good-looking enough. But being brown, I know I don’t have the luxury of being too tall or short or fat or thin, too attractive or not good-looking enough. I’m just considered ‘too ethnic.’ I’ve got to stay positive to go up against that.”
I was worried that I may have overshared in a professional environment. But Sonia put me at ease by recounting similar stories other ethnic actors had shared with her. As I got up to leave, she handed me her business card and kindly offered, “Call me anytime you need anything.”
* * *
Later that summer, finally, an audition! Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a sitcom about a suburban family of witches and their talking cat. I was up for a small role: just a few lines playing a college student named Prajeeb in Sabrina’s study group, but I was very excited. Though I had done Brookfield, it was almost impossible for an actor of color to get an audition for any of the big sitcoms, which were all purposely white: Will & Grace, Friends. Even Seinfeld.
Auditions can be a lot of fun to prepare for—I start by creating a backstory to the character, grounding who he is as specifically as possible, and developing his arc in the scene. I envisioned Prajeeb as a laid-back kid from Portland, Oregon, who was super into camping and small-batch organic coffee. I decided that he loves flannel button-downs like Eddie Vedder, so I wore one to the audition.
I did well in the first two rounds. As I walked to my car after the callback, the casting director came chasing after me. “Kal, the producers loved you and want you to read it one more time. Can you come back in with me?”
Hell yeah! It’s always a good sign if they want another reading. On the walk back to the casting office, I daydreamed for just a fleeting moment: thinking about my little cousins who probably watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch. What a fun surprise if they randomly turned it on and saw me in an episode. I smiled confidently as I walked through the door to read for the six well-manicured faces another time.
“Thanks for coming back, Kal. We’d like you to do it again,” the main producer said with a grin.
“I’d be happy to!” I said.
“This time with an accent.”
For fuck’s sake.
My game face was strong though my blood boiled. By then I’d experienced this bait and switch many times before—you don’t bring anything stereotypical into an audition, and the producers ask it of you. This request wasn’t quite as bad as some of the auditions for Indian food-delivery guys or store clerks that had been written in broken English. It wasn’t as nauseating as the woman who suggested I tie a bedsheet around my head if I didn’t have a turban to wear to an audition. Still, I decided to not give them the satisfaction of knowing the sudden rage inside me.
This rage was based on two things. The first was very clear flashbacks to David Cohen spitting on me on the middle school bus after quoting Apu from The Simpsons. The second was because I have a low tolerance for stupid and boring things. An Indian accent, really? That’s the most clever note a team of Hollywood producers could come up with?
I was proud of the two rounds of auditions I gave as Prajeeb from Portland, Oregon, who was super into camping and small-batch organic coffee! I wanted to play Hipster Prajeeb! So, if they wanted the kind of stereotypical Indian accent that wasn’t on my menu, I was going to make them feel uncomfortable. I was going to make them look me in the eye. I was going to dare them to say it right to my face, by pointing out my talents, so that they could feel guilty and realize how terribly they were behaving. Hopefully it would be enough to change their minds.
“What kind of accent do you want?” I said deftly. “I can do Scottish, Irish, southern, Italian, New York…”
“Why don’t we just stick to Indian?”
Yeeeeeesh.
I had less than five seconds to think through what I wanted to do. If I did the accent, I might get the role. It would look good to have a network sitcom job on my thin résumé. As I learned from Brookfield, I was going to have to work harder than white actors to build credits. The gig also paid about $700, more than a month’s rent. If I didn’t do the accent, I probably wouldn’t get this job. Some other kid would get the credit on his résumé and the cash in his pocket, and I’d have to continue working odd jobs until I booked something else that may or may not be better than this.
I chose to read the scene again with an Indian accent.
I tried hard to remain grounded in the backstory I created for Prajeeb as I served up the ridiculous off-menu Indian lilt that many of the white folks in my professional life couldn’t seem to get enough of. I barely got the first line out before all the producers’ faces lit up with glee and they were laughing much harder than any sane person should laugh at a sitcom about a talking cat.
Forget the talking cat. I felt like a dancing monkey.
They proudly smiled as though they had accomplished a great feat and thanked me for coming back from the parking lot. I analyzed things on the drive home. It’s not that I think an accent alone makes a one-dimensional stereotype. Lots of people have accents in real life, and lots of those people are cabdrivers and store clerks. A problem arises when we focus on the working-class nature of certain professions to protest a stereotype （oh man, he has to play a cabdriver）—as if being a cabdriver is inherently a bad thing, or that honest work is something to look down on. What really makes these roles one-dimensional stereotypes is that the person’s ethnicity or race is the focus of who they are as a character, which tends to be the case when it comes to the Hollywood version of cabdrivers and store clerks, or actors who are asked to put on hokey accents for no reason despite having prepared a full backstory for the character.
Racial signifiers are stereotypical because they’re reductionist, yes. They’re also artistically boring because they mean that a character rarely has any agency. Everything is tied to identity. Is the character hungry? Curry jokes! Sleepy? Probably because of a mystical Indian spell. Going shopping for clothes? Probably a sari. Zzzzzz. Those characters don’t advance the plot. They just function to serve the arcs of the white characters. Stereotypical representation is dehumanizing when it removes the full breadth of what it means to be a living, breathing, multidimensional person with traits that are independent of identity.
Nobody was around when I got back to the house I shared with some of the homies, so I did some push-ups on the cold blue tile in the kitchen, contemplated making a screwdriver （the only cocktail I knew how to make）， and dreaded what I assumed was the happy phone call coming any minute now.
When Barbara told me I got the part, I told her what happened. “Is there any way I could do it without the accent? There’s no reason for Prajeeb to have one.” A seasoned agent and talented stage mom, Barbara suggested that I accept the much-needed job and said I should ask the director in person when I got to the set. “These things are often better posed as creative conversations during production,” she encouraged. It made sense to me. Besides, a month’s rent.