I guess it's a little less common now, thankfully, but unfortunately still happens.
In those days, it was not uncommon, to be clear, to go to an audition and see white guys in brownface. Two things happened in the final callback: One, I walked into the audition room knowing that there was going to be another guy who I was up against, and I walk in and it was a white dude in brownface that kind of caught me off guard.
#KAL PENN ACTOR MOVIE#
I ultimately decided to audition for this movie and wasn't sure if I was going to take it. So her hope was that I would book a few of these in rapid enough succession that I could break out of the "Brown Catch-22" and prove to the town that I had merits as an artist outside of the confines of these types of roles. couldn't get me in the door for auditions that weren't written brown, and the only brown parts that were written were written to be fairly stereotypical. On his breakthrough role of "Taj Mahal" in the teen sex comedy Van Wilder and what he calls the "Brown Catch-22" And so I kind of got a lesson in, I think it's a bit of a misnomer that racism only comes from ignorance it can also come from a conscious maintenance of power and a desire to keep people down.
#KAL PENN ACTOR TV#
He looked at me and he said, "Well, your cousins should feel lucky that you're allowed to be on TV to begin with. It's a bit of a misnomer that racism only comes from ignorance it can also come from a conscious maintenance of power and a desire to keep people down.Īnd I remember this so clearly. At family gatherings, he says, he dreaded being asked about his plans for the future. When he was growing up in New Jersey as the child of immigrant parents, just becoming an actor had seemed like a rebellious choice. Taking a hiatus from acting was a risk, but Penn was used to taking chances.
fashion, gave me a look that we all know and love her for and said, 'I can assure you you're being hired in spite of it,' " Penn says. He says he initially worried that he'd been hired by the Obama administration only because of his fame as an actor, but presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett disabused him of that notion. Penn had gotten his start acting in the stoner comedies Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and National Lampoon's Van Wilder. In 2009, actor Kal Penn did something unexpected: He left his job as a cast regular on the popular TV show House to take a position in the Obama White House, serving as a junior staffer and liaison to arts communities, young Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Kal Penn speaks at the Global Citizen Festival in New York's Central Park on Sept.
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