During the week before the shoot, I was so nervous that I spent more time rehearsing what I was going to say to the director than I did my lines in the episode. I felt totally robbed of what should be the pure joy of booking a coveted television role. I so badly wanted to experience what the white actors got to experience when their agents called with the good news that they booked their first roles: excitement, dreams that come true, hard work that’s paid off. I resented the fact that I instead found myself thinking about identity, about politics, about any of that shit. I just wanted to play the human version of the damn character.
On the morning of the shoot, I found the amiable director cozied up next to the coffee cart on the soundstage and politely made my case. “You have such a funny show,” I told him. “I’m so thankful to be joining you for this hilarious little part! I was just hoping, you know, that maybe I could play Prajeeb without the Indian accent?” His mood turned so fast you’d have thought I asked for something crazy, like the scene in the Borat sequel when Tutar’s father questions if his daughter can attend the debutante ball even though “her moon blood has arrived.” The director wasn’t shy about what he thought of me. “You’re doing that accent.”
I told myself maybe he’s just not educated about this. Maybe if he just knew better, he’d agree with me. Sure, it didn’t work with Captain Moneybags, but not all white producers and directors are the same, right? I brought up the creative backstory I’d crafted for Prajeeb, told him why I didn’t think an Indian accent was necessary for the humor of a guy I purposely grounded in northwestern American values.
The flannel!
Pearl Jam!
His eyes narrowed. He was very angry. “We hired you to do the accent and that’s what you’re doing, got it?”
My final plea.
“I just thought it would be nice for my little cousins to see me in a role that wasn’t a stereotype,” I said, hoping to assure my participation wouldn’t fuel a new generation of middle-school David Cohens. “Stereotypes are all I ever saw on TV growing up.” He looked at me with laser-focused eyes, and for a brief moment I wondered if I had gotten through to him.
“Your little cousins should be happy you get to be on a TV show at all. And so should you.”
I went through the rest of the day hating the job. It wasn’t that I expected to convince him that Prajeeb didn’t need an accent （although that was my hope and certainly part of the sting）。 It was the way I was being spoken to. The subtext of what he wanted. The complete awareness and purposefulness of the director’s decision to require a stereotypical accent, knowing that it was reductionist and othering. I finally had another TV gig and I wasn’t even enjoying it. That’s what $700 was worth to me in August 2000.
The week before my episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch aired, I anxiously called my ten-year-old cousin anyway. “Hi!” I said, with some excitement. “Do you watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch?” A true New York kid, he retorted, “If you’re trying to ask me whether or not I know that you’re going to be on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, yes, I know you’re going to be on it, and no, I don’t watch that show.” Amazing. Even my little cousin had better taste.
* * *
A few months and several stereotypical auditions later, a big opportunity! Barbara got me in to read for the head of casting for the WB network （which is now defunct and was replaced by the CW）。 The network was looking for actors to play young marines on a new TV series, and I had a shot at auditioning for one of the supporting leads. I read the script diligently and worked hard on all five audition scenes nonstop for a week. Backstory. Character arc. The process I love.
I pumped myself up the entire drive to the studio. I want this job. I am this character.
I got to the waiting room very early and briefly clocked that all the other actors were white. Each one was given fifteen minutes in the audition room. The only open seat was between the sign-in sheet and the door, which meant I could size up my competition a little closer—glance at the other actors’ résumés and see who their agents were. I found it interesting that they were all represented by the biggest firms in Hollywood, although almost none of them had any serious training—certainly not as prestigious as UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. I decided that this would bode well for me. My training has to put me ahead of the pack, right?1
An assistant called my name, and I walked into the audition feeling confident. I reached out to shake the WB casting head’s hand. She retracted her arm, grabbed my headshot, and glanced back and forth between me and my photo with considerable confusion.
“You’re Kal Penn?” she asked.
“I am.”
“Okay, well uh… I’m not sure if they told you but we’re only going to be reading the first scene today.” Only the first scene? I thought to myself, that’ll take like three minutes, tops. Everyone else has spent at least fifteen minutes in this room.
There was clearly something about my look that the casting director immediately didn’t like. She had decided not to cast me, before I even had the chance to audition.
As usual, I knew I only had a few seconds to decide how to react. A few seconds to take in the information, suppress the emotion. Against racism, my best device was professionalism. Just then, an angel popped up in the right side of my head. I’d seen him before. He was shouting, You don’t know that this is racism! Maybe she thinks you’re just too tall or too short! Maybe she wants to cut the scenes because she has to run to a meeting! Maybe it’s because you don’t have a bigger agent! You’re already here in this room, so do a kick-ass job anyway! Show her how good you are! A tiny red devil popped up in the left side of my head, whispering nefariously, Don’t listen to him. You’re the only one here who isn’t white, buddy. Obviously, that’s what this is about. Don’t bother. You have no chance. Just go home.
A lot of my early auditioning was a question of which voice to listen to on a given day.
Fuck off, Devil, I want this part. I would listen to the angel and I was going to give it my all, even if I only got to read that first scene. I took a beat. Peeked at my notes about the backstory. Channeled the character arc and began.
Two pages in, the WB casting head interrupted. “Thank you so much, Kal. I’m sorry. I just have to stop you before you finish the first scene. I just um… I just have to ask. What are you?”
“Huh?”
“What are you?… Like where are you from?”
“Oh, I’m from New Jersey. I graduated from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Tele—”
“No, I mean like where are you really from? Are you Latin?”
The goddamn devil was right.
“I’m uh, ethnically Indian. I was born in New Jer—”
“You look like you could pass for Latin. Are you mixed, at least?”
“Mixed? Um, no—”
“Ugh, are you sure?”
There was now a miniature version of me standing on the shoulders of the tiny devil inside my own head. Was I sure? I thought to myself, Lady, I already got myself a white-sounding stage name, I need to “at least” be mixed too?