The women of “The Office” stick together.
Two stars of the beloved NBC sitcom, Jenna Fischer (Pam Beesly) and Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin), spoke out against the Television Academy in support of Mindy Kaling Thursday while appearing on BuzzFeed’s “AM to DM.”
Last week, Kaling, who worked as a writer, executive producer, director and actor (playing Kelly Kapoor), on the series, spoke with Elle magazine for its Women in Hollywood November issue. Kaling told Elle she had been the only person dropped from the list of producers credited on the show when it was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series.
“There were other Office writer-performer-producers who were NOT cut from the list,” Kaling said on Twitter of the incident. “Just me. The most junior person, and woman of color.”
She told Elle she had to get letters from “all the other male, white producers” on the show, attesting that she contributed.
While speaking to BuzzFeed, Fischer and Kinsey admitted that at the time, they didn’t know this had happened to Kaling, but Fischer said she was “so glad that she spoke up and said something.”
“Yeah, because that’s crap,” Kinsey added.
Fischer then referenced a statement the Television Academy made to the Los Angeles Times, in which it stated that many people were asked to “justify their producer credits.”
It also said that at the time there was “an increasing concern years ago regarding the number of performers and writers seeking producer credits. At the time the Producers Guild worked with the Television Academy to correctly vet producer eligibility.”
But Fischer wasn’t buying that.
“I saw that there was a response from the Academy that said something like because she had multiple roles on the show it flagged her,” Fischer told BuzzFeed. “And I think my response would be, well, so did BJ Novak, Mike Schur, and so did Paul Lieberstein. They were all writer-producer-performers on the show so I guess I would say, so why single out Mindy and not those gentlemen?”
REAL LIFE. REAL NEWS. REAL VOICES.
Help us tell more of the stories that matter from voices that too often remain unheard.