During the early years of “Saturday Night Live”'s run, the environment was not friendly to women or minorities. This is made abundantly clear in both the book “Live From New York” and interviews with former female writers and cast members such as Jane Curtin.
“We all saw it,” she said in an interview with Vulture in 2011, “and it was just overwhelmingly rude, the treatment of the women writers, and just unnecessary.”
Many former cast members have spoken out on how the higher-ups within the show and the network were dismissive of both women’s and minority persons’ sketch ideas, and if you happened to be a woman of color — forget it. Even today, only three of the 16 cast members on “SNL” are minorities.
While you’d think cast members of color would advocate for more diversity on the show, Kenan Thompson implied in an interview with TV Guide on Monday that the lack of black female cast members was due to a lack of talented black female comedians. Um, has he not seen Wanda Sykes, Retta, Mo’Nique or Jessica Williams from “The Daily Show”?
“It’s just a tough part of the business,” Thompson said. “Like in auditions, they just never find ones that are ready.”
“In the 38 years ‘SNL’ has been on the air, the series has only had four black female cast members: Yvonne Hudson (1980-81), Danitra Vance (1985-86), Ellen Cleghorne (1991-95) and Maya Rudolph (2000-2007),” TV Guide reporter Sadie Gennis wrote. “Of the four, only three were repertory players (Hudson was only a featured player before being fired midseason). This means, there were large gaps in ‘SNL’’s history when there were no black women on the show at all.”
Jay Pharoah, the other black male cast member, has spoken up about the show’s need for black female comics.
“They need to pay attention,” he said, according to TV Guide, and even named black actress Darmirra Brunson as a potential addition to the cast.
“Why do I think she should be on the show? Because she’s black first of all, and she’s really talented,” Pharoah said, according to TV Guide. “She’s amazing. She needs to be on ‘SNL.’ I said it. And I believe they need to follow up with it like they said they were going to do last year.”
Considering how “SNL” has slipped over the past few decades, one would imagine the producers would be scrambling for fresh talent. While women have had an expanded role on the show — Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and countless others — it’s still lacking a presence of women of color. Thompson is accomplishing nothing by placing the blame on a lack of talent.
It’s not as if the producers — overwhelmingly white and male — have any personal incentive to hire black women. It’s up to actors like Thompson and Pharoah, as well as other women, to advocate for more diversity on the show — not blame the problem on a lack of talent.
A version of this editorial ran on page 6 on 10/16/2013 under the headline "Kenan speaks out But he misses the point about the lack of diversity on “SNL”"
