“I wish I was a woman of color so I could just get any job I want,” says one of the ignoramuses working for Emma Thompson’s long-running late-night show in the first trailer for “Late Night.” Nisha Ganatra’s comedy sees Katherine (Thompson) giving her writers room, currently full of white comedy bros, an overdue makeover. Under pressure to make a “diversity hire” and ward off the threat of imminent cancellation, Katherine hires Molly (Mindy Kaling), a fresh new voice.
Molly knows what everyone thinks about her — and why she’s there. “But just because I was lucky enough to get this job doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to lose it,” she says.
Katherine is desperate to keep her gig, and demands that her writers “think about why the show’s bad and come up with ways to fix it.”
“You’re a little old and a little white,” Molly explains.
When we asked Ganatra what she’d like audiences to think about after watching the film she said, “I want women to think about how to hold the door open behind you rather than slam it shut with some false sense of ‘making it’ being a zero-sum game. I want people to think about how easy it is to actually make your work environment inclusive — to not have endless meetings and committees on diversity but to just hire women and people of color. It’s that simple,” she emphasized. “Just do it quickly instead of talking about doing it forever and a day.”
Inspired by her own experiences as a writer for “The Office,” Kaling penned the script for “Late Night.” The pic scored one of the biggest deals out of Sundance this year. You can catch it in theaters beginning June 7.
