Mindy Kaling and Emma Thompson Try to Make Late Night TV Less White in New Film

By Maria Sherman | March 7, 2019 | 4:45pm

Entertainment Movies

In 2017, six seasons into The Mindy Project, Mindy Kaling (playing Dr. Mindy Lahiri) put away her white lab coat after successfully navigating the life of an awkward yet self-assured young professional in New York City. It appears she’s bringing that energy back in the Amazon Studios film Late Night, where she stars as a new writer on the fictional late-night program Tonight with Katherine Newbury, hosted by Emma Thompson.

Thompson plays a non-empathetic, tyrannical boss known to shut down raise requests without a second thought. In addition to her overwhelming Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada approach to management, her TV show can’t quite keep up with the times. The bits, according to Kaling’s character, are “a little old and a little white.” To solve this problem, she hires Kaling—her writing room’s first and only woman and person of color. Clearly, the show is a meta commentary on how boring, white, and old most late-night TV is and has always been.