| Interviewer: |
Why aren't you more mainstream?
|
| Gina Yashere: |
I am mainstream. Come to my live gigs and my audiences are 50% white, 50% black; I straddle that line perfectly. But the powers-that-be in television are still white middle-class men and they look at me and they don't see mainstream; they see black woman first. Most white comedians who can sell out theatres the way I do would have their own TV show by now, but it's not the same for black comics.
|
| Interviewer: |
What do you think of the black comedy shows that have been on television recently?
|
| Gina Yashere: |
No comment.
|
| Interviewer: |
No comment because you don't want to slag off your friends or no comment because you'd like a show yourself so you don't want to upset the BBC?
|
| Gina Yashere: |
You're trying to get me in trouble. All I'm going to say is there's not enough. Why are black comics all fighting for that one TV show? And if that one person gets a TV show the rest of us feel like we've been passed over for promotion? Jocelyn Jee Esien gets her show, and because she's got a TV show I know that I'm never going to get one, because they've got their "black female comedian" token slot filled. They look at us all the same, and yet they can have 100 white blokes on TV at one time and it's still not enough. |
10:18 pm • 27 February 2012 • 92 notes