Emily from India? Indian-american Comedian's Prank Sparks Racism and Pop Culture Debate

With the Golden Globe announcing their nominations for this year, there has been a lot of chatter over the usual snubs and surprises as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association put out their list. Among them was the Netflix comedy drama Emily in Paris which got nominated for two categories, one as the Best Comedy or Musical Series and Lily Collins picked up the other nomination for best actress.

However, even though the cast and crew were obviously happy with the nominations, for many including a few from the show were also surprised given the lukewarm and sometimes even negative reviews the show got when it was released on the streaming site. Even one of the show's writers, Deborah Copaken, echoed the sentiments and wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian where she spoke about how despite being happy for her own show's nomination, there might have been a much stronger contender with the Michaela Coel created I May Destroy You may have been the more deserving candidate.

Now picking up on that, a US-based comedian has pulled off an elaborate prank on Twitter by posing as a writer on the show Emily in Paris and expressed her disappointment at the show being nominated. Abby Govindan, an Indian-american comedian from Houston, Texas started off a series of tweets, posing as one of the show's writers.

Govindan kept on the joke, and as part of it.

"Yes I am an Indian woman who created a show about a white girl in Paris. Why would I care about telling diverse stories when I can tell not diverse stories and make $20 million from it," she tweeted later.

Following Govindan's 'really convincing' tweets, several online outlets even published stories on the same. They also credited her as the show's writer, which was also added to the show's Wikipedia page as part of the joke Govindan played.

Twitter also seemed to be liking the way Govindan was headed on about the joke and essentially, the conversations around equal representation in art and culture.

Like many others on social media, Govindan had basically attempted to start a conversation around how race-dictated the nominations at the Golden Globes have been with the Michaela Coel headlined show I Could Destroy You being totally snubbed when it deserved a nod for sure, considering the sensitive issue of sexual assault it handled so well.

With more and more conversations taking place about race, racial justice and around People of colour, it makes it even more essential for racial representation in elements of art and pop culture in today's time, irrespective of their colour but just based on the stories they are telling.

As part of the piece Emily's writer Deborah Copaken said that even though she was happy about the show's nomination, she was unfortunately sad about Coel’s snub. "That I May Destroy You did not get one Golden Globe nod is not only wrong, it’s what is wrong with everything," Copaken said.