Kal Penn on the Power of Cultural Diplomacy

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

January 27, 2020

KAL PENN: In seventh and eighth grade, when I first discovered my love for art and storytelling, I realized it had the opportunity to bring people together. At the time, when I was a kid, it was realizing that the kids who would bully you or the kids who had no interest in the arts or the kids from different backgrounds could still enjoy the same TV shows or the same play you were putting on. And that, in a very roundabout way, led to my love for art as a way of unifying folks.

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MARK HANNAH: This is Mark Hannah of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Welcome to None of the Above. Today, I'm joined by the actor, comedian, and former Obama White House official Kal Penn. You know him from the movie series Harold and Kumar, How I Met Your Mother, and some other hit shows, including his latest show, Sunny Side, which he produced as well as starred in. Kal has held a number of positions in the Obama White House and continues to be actively engaged in politics and the issues we care most about. Thanks, Kal, for joining us.

PENN: Thanks for having me.

HANNAH: Let's just start off with the evolution of your career. You're somebody who has grown up very politically aware, politically conscious. You started in entertainment. You famously played a stoner on Harold and Kumar.

PENN: Sure did.

HANNAH: And then you went to work for, you know, liberal President Barack Obama. Is it a coincidence? Right now we're starting to see a lot of pot legalization. Is this something you had in mind?

PENN: I wish I could take some credit. But no, I've generally tried to keep my love for acting and my art separate from my public service, with the one caveat being, to the extent that any of us have any goals, I'm really fascinated by the cultural diplomacy space. Which is not to say you play a stoner and then advocate for legalization of marijuana. That's not necessarily my sort of expertise or project or trajectory.

I grew up in New Jersey, right outside of New York City and in a fairly diverse community. When you're sixteen years old, you don't realize that having a phenomenal public education system benefits you the way it does. It wasn't until I got to college and met people—I went to UCLA undergrad—and I remember talking to somebody in my dorm about the U.N. When they're eighteen.

HANNAH: Of course. Very high minded. Lofty.

PENN: I said something like, “The first time you go when you're twelve and blah, blah, blah.”

And then they’d say, “What do you mean? The first time you go? You've been to the U.N.?”

And I’d say, “Wait, you haven't been to the U.N.?” Then it's a sudden realization that seems so obvious now. You're in your little bubble of privilege, having grown up right outside of New York City, and when you learn about the U.N. in sixth grade, you take a field trip. And then you go tons of times if you're a nerd like I was, and you take the train into the city and explore it.

It’s the idea of public service, or at least being aware of the world around you, partially because of the luxury of being so close to New York City, having a personal interest in it, and then being close to my grandparents who marched with Gandhi in the Indian independence movement.

HANNAH: Cultural diplomacy is a phrase you just threw out there. Can you talk a little bit about what cultural diplomacy means to you?

PENN: To me, cultural diplomacy is the exact opposite of that poster some people have with the aircraft carrier on it that says, “Ninety eight thousand tons of diplomacy,” or whatever. It's well done. A lot of my Republican friends used to have them on the backs of their dorm doors. So, I've always been interested, but in seventh and eighth grade, when I first discovered my love for art and storytelling, I realized it had the opportunity to bring people together. At the time when I was a kid, it was realizing the kids who would bully you or the kids who had no interest in the arts or the kids from different backgrounds could still enjoy the same TV shows or the same play you were putting on and suspend their disbelief. And that, in a very roundabout way, led to my love for art as a way of unifying folks or at least contributing to cross-cultural understanding, the idea that ultimately we all want the same things for our families: a roof over your head, food to eat, and good health. Whether it's a book you read or a TV show you resonate with—as I started working professionally as an actor, I realized, there's actually a term for this. There are people—Reagan and Obama were both very well known for cultural diplomacy, quote unquote, in very different ways, Cold War versus post—but it was of interest to me.

I had the chance to study it a little bit. I did a grad certificate program at Stanford at the Spogli Institute and focused on it to the extent I was able. All of which is to say that the ways in which, oftentimes, non-state actors or at least nongovernmental actors can contribute to the types of cross-cultural understanding that lead us to not have to resort to military action or even not necessarily have to resort to governments needing to exercise their beef in one way or another is a beauty and a reference I'd like to see more of.

HANNAH: Do you think the recent history of military interventions could have been unnecessary if we only understood each other more?

PENN: It’s a great question, and it’s also a really broad one. I would hesitate to say, “Yes,” because of a lack of cultural diplomacy, we see more military intervention than we need to. But I do think what you just touched on, the idea of empathy, is something we can always use a little bit more of, especially when it comes to people we don't necessarily communicate with. I think the interesting caveat, especially for a country like the United States, which has billions and billions of dollars’ worth of cultural exports, it's not even an active decision by our government in most cases. Think about Hollywood. Think about sports—the NBA expanding the way it expands all over the world. In the last ten years, those are all things our government has relatively little to do with. When I was on President Obama's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, we were the first delegation to go to Cuba after that presidential visit, and the purpose was cultural diplomacy. I remember meeting with my counterparts in the Cuban film industry and artists there, and it blew a lot of the artists’ minds who we met that our government literally does not control the movies we make. So, I pitch a show, even like this immigration comedy or the Harold and Kumar movies, which is about marijuana and would get you thrown in prison, especially when the movies came out. They had such a hard time understanding that you were not making these movies either because or in spite of our government.

HANNAH: I want to talk a little bit about your time in the Obama administration. Your mandate was to focus on outreach to specific communities and to engage them.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: Presumably he saw in you somebody who could bring their message in an unorthodox or creative or outside-the-Beltway kind of fashion to a broader group of people. How do we get disenfranchised people involved in policy debates? What kind of strategies did you develop or insights did you have working in that capacity to inform your work?

PENN: I'll answer in two parts. I'm glad you brought up the reasons why we were all hired, because the Office of Public Engagement under Obama previously was the public liaison office and varied in different administrations, but generally was a place where lobbyists and people who already knew how to access the federal government—that was the office they knew to go to. Obama retooled it in the sense that he expanded it. There was a point person for every conceivable demographic group or issue. In the cases of most of us, we didn't come from political organizing or the world of politics. They were obviously incredibly qualified organizers, having come from the campaign, but their background wasn't the same old way of doing things.

We were tasked with almost the impossible, which is that you're not there to wrangle votes for members on the Hill. The Hatch Act prevents you from doing that. But you also need to reach out to convey information to new groups of folks and, particularly at that time in history, people who previously may not have participated in government before. Some of it's the obvious—you reach out to organizations that cover them. You reach out to have conference calls and invite people into the White House and speak at their conventions and things like that. I think those are all the low-hanging fruit of how you do things. My big paranoia was, by the way, for the first couple of days, was I only hired because I'm an actor? Valerie Jarrett, my boss, said, “Kal, I can assure you that you've been hired in spite of that.”

And I said, “OK awesome.”

HANNAH: Presumably your—and I don't know what you want to call it—star quality or your ability to communicate in a charismatic way qualifies you for reaching out to groups that aren't traditionally interested in these policies.

PENN: I think that was everybody, though, which is the point I'm making. Michael Strautmanis was Valerie's deputy, and one of the best pieces of advice he gave me from day one was on the campaign, save for that first part where you're going out to college students. When I was on the Arts Policy Committee or when I was working on organizing, in a campaign office at 2:00 in the morning with a bunch of other twenty-eight-year-olds, it was very clear: you're there to put your head down and do the work. And he reminded me, “Because this is the White House, you know everybody you're working with from the campaign, but because of the microscope that we're all under, people are not going to necessarily know you're here to keep your head down and do good work. So, just be mindful of that.” I think that went for everybody in our office. We were all there because we were all exceptional at communicating with people in a particular way. I can give you an example of when Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed.

Interlude featuring archival audio

PENN: I was working primarily on youth outreach, outreach to Asian-American Pacific Islanders, and outreach to the arts community. Those were my three little buckets. Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal touched the youth piece of it a little bit, but primarily it was the folks who were working on LGBT outreach and military outreach. Of the meetings I sat in on—and for the Affordable Care Act, as well—I felt like I had one of the easier jobs in the White House, because if you were a young person, of course LGBT folks should be able to serve in the military. College Republicans were asking what was taking Obama so long. Most young people, most Americans—I can't remember the statistic—I think it's fifty-two percent of people don't know what a Senate filibuster is. Members of Congress love to capitalize on that—Obama's not doing enough; he's the one who didn't close Guantanamo. But you voted “no” to close Guantanamo. So how is he the problem? It was a lot of those types of lessons. How do you explain those things to people? I think for something like the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the White House did a great job at that because you were making those stories personal. For something like the Affordable Care Act implementation, to get it passed, it was a similar thing. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News are never going to cover the human interest stories that are going to help move the needle on getting those votes. I want to be clear: I wasn't on the communications team, so I wasn't in charge of a lot of this stuff. But we were helpful in terms of getting op-eds placed in a local paper in North Carolina, or if we knew organizers on college campuses, I would say, it's very important to make your voice heard. If you're thinking of holding a rally for the Affordable Care Act, do it with a bunch of other fraternities and sororities who care about having access to health care and invite the local press so it will end up on the news.

HANNAH: It's like media strategy 101.

PENN: Media strategy, but also community strategy. These are stories that affect real people. You don't necessarily think that if you're watching CNN, but you definitely understand that if you're watching your local news at night and you're opening up your college papers. That was one of the things that was helpful to us. The system is designed for us to not feel like one vote or one voice can matter, but when taken collectively, especially if it's people who historically hadn't participated, it shakes things up enough that people have to listen, which we're seeing now on the flip side of things.

HANNAH: Did you ever at a point, while serving Barack Obama and serving in the Obama Administration, feel like you were not completely in sync on a particular policy issue, and if so, how did you reconcile that or subordinate your own interests?

PENN: I assume all of us had felt that way quite strongly at different points in our public service careers. One of the interesting things about Mideast policy, on which I am obviously not an expert by any means, is refugee issues have been something I have been interested in since I was a kid—especially going back to my grandparents’ stories about pre-partition India independence and then post-partition—was how much communal violence there was and how awful that was, particularly for my grandparents, who were Gandhians, and their view of their India was that it was multi-religious and multi-faceted and secular and the whole bit.

I was doing an episode of Celebrity Master Chef, which apparently is a thing. It exists, as one does.

If you win—which I did, by the way—you get twenty five thousand dollars for a nonprofit, for charity. This was pre-current administration. This was in the previous administration. I asked around a couple folks. I said that I know I want to pick a refugee nonprofit; what's a good one? I think we shot the show right before the election, so we knew what was coming was not going to be great for refugee populations no matter what, even though we still had a couple of months left in the Obama administration. I called a few folks who had worked at the National Security Council and said, “Give me a couple of good organizations.” One was the U.N. Refugee and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Another one was I.R.C., International Rescue Committee.

I chose the former, and it was explained that one of the interesting things about that agency is it ends up in the middle of a lot of negotiations between the U.S. government, the Israeli government, and Palestinians, because everybody agrees it should be funded. But the Israelis don't want to say it should be funded, because it's bad for their domestic politics. And the Palestinians obviously don't want to ask too much.

So going back to diplomacy, I said, “Well, what an interesting exercise. If I chose this organization it would basically be something that all parties want funded. That's great.” So I chose it, and I ended up winning Master Chef. Of course, they did a press release, and I'm thinking, this is fantastic. And then there's a lot of backlash about why I would donate to this organization. People have very strong feelings about it. I still don't quite know how to position a conversation like that, knowing that even going into it, all parties want this organization funded, and nobody wants to vocalize funding it. I thought it was sad more than anything else. If all parties agree, why is it we're doing that? I think none of us, especially your listeners, no matter what their political views are, are fans of strawman arguments. So why donate to this organization and not the other one? If you're so concerned with Palestine, what about the Uighurs in China? I say yes to all that. I’d love for us to see a better world where things are more equitable for anyone who's suffering and would love to see less violence, period, no matter what form it takes.

HANNAH: You're the child of immigrants; you're not an immigrant. You were born in New Jersey. Wouldn't you like to see the immigration issues solved on a policy level? Are you a fan of immigration, comprehensive immigration?

PENN: Yes.

HANNAH: Do you have advice for people listening and the policy community?

PENN: I worked on the DREAM Act. I remember it well. It fell short by five votes. There also happened to be five Democrats who voted ‘”o” on the DREAM Act, and that was a failure of the bill.

Interlude featuring archival audio

PENN: I also remember twenty minutes after the vote—and the vote was the same day as the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal vote—the President said to a group of five or six of us who were in one of the staff rooms in the West Wing, “Huge victory on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a real disappointment on the DREAM Act. But the DREAM Act, or a version of the DREAM Act, has been raised several times, and five votes short is the closest it's ever come. We keep getting closer and closer, and so to consider that a total failure would be wrong because our government and our democratic system is designed to move very slowly on purpose. All of the advocates who worked their hearts out in getting us five votes away from actually getting the thing passed should feel some solace in knowing that the next time it comes up, hopefully even those five votes will have been won over.”

HANNAH: That’s The Audacity of Hope. That's a consummate optimist.

PENN: Going from that to DACA and executive fixes—which I think he didn't propose at first because, as you know, from his first term, the whole point was to get it done legislatively so that nobody can undo it as quickly—I have a lot of hope about comprehensive immigration reform. I feel like I'm giving you the same answer to different tough questions, which is: the status quo isn't working. If the status quo isn't working, what are you going to do differently? I think what the Republicans are so good at is scapegoating. The reason folks in the manufacturing sector are losing their jobs is not necessarily because immigrants are coming to take the jobs. It's because of automation. Every day that we deny to these hardworking people that your job went away because of automation is such a disservice to our fellow Americans. By the way, when Brazil and China and India and all these other countries are investing in math and science and technology and training people—and they've got these emerging young populations—who do you think is going to beat us if we're not investing in these things? That's a huge worry, and it does a disservice to a lot of these hardworking folks who would love to have the jobs they deserve.

HANNAH: I want to move into another area where the status quo isn't working, and that's immigration. Obviously your most recent project, Sunny Side—it's a phenomenal show if you haven't checked it out—is a mainstream sort of sitcom.

PENN: It's a dumb comedy on purpose.

HANNAH: It's a dumb comedy on purpose, but you're grappling with certain issues in a tacit and delicate way. You’ve got a couple of Chinese immigrants. You're telling a story of a former New York City council member and his group of friends, and it's a character driven comedy. But you're touching on real policy issues around immigration. Can you talk a little bit about how that project came to fruition?

PENN: About five years ago, I had an idea for a show. I wanted it to be diverse, reminiscent of shows that I grew up on, and relevant. I loved the idea of maybe teaching something, or being the head of a group. I was remembering Head of the Class way, way back in the day. I loved watching Seinfeld and Friends, both of which take place in New York City. I grew up right outside of New York City. I don't know any whiter depictions of New York City than Seinfeld or Friends, and that's on purpose, right? Executive producers and show creators don't include women or people of color on purpose. It's not like there's any shortage.

HANNAH: Because they don't think very large audiences are going to identify with that?

PENN: I don't know. You'd have to ask the people who created those shows who, by the way, I think are hilarious. I don't mean to say that in a way that is disparaging overall. But, I don't know what the reasons for it were at the time. In some senses, it's always archaic—Nielsen ratings have historically been very archaic—and studio ratings in general have not asked, unless you're white or black, what you watch. I remember where I had an internship at a studio in college, and I remember having a conversation with my boss in which I had pitched an Asian-American actor for a role among many, many other white actors. He was so outraged that I would pitch this Asian-American guy for a role. And he goes, “Get rid of this kid. Give me good, white American actors.”

And I said, “Why?”

HANNAH: He said that to you?

PENN: He said that to me. The arrogance of Hollywood should not be underestimated.

HANNAH: Tell me how you really feel.

PENN: Well, I appreciated his candor, too. I would much rather know where people stand. So I said to him, “Why? What's the deal? Why are you so opposed to having an Asian-American actor?”

He said, “Asians don't see movies.” Well, that's ridiculous. I'm Asian-American, and I watch a lot of movies and so do my friends and family who also happen to be Asian-American. So, I took the liberty of going through a bunch of studio data I had access to, and I saw that next to Asian-American was an asterisk. The asterisk was not there because Asian-Americans don't see movies. The asterisk was there because nobody was asking Asian-Americans whether they saw movies. And so the absence of certain communities historically has led to exactly what you're asking. Well, why? But growing up watching those shows and loving them—and I loved Seinfeld especially. So frickin’ funny. The characters are hilarious. George Costanza is every Indian uncle. Period.

HANNAH: There's a universalism to the comedy, right?

PENN: Yes. From a place of frustration as a kid, or even conflict, I love Seinfeld, but why are there never any people who look like me on Seinfeld in the most diverse city in America? What's going on? Now, I'm an adult. I can actually create a show. I was aspiring to be a Seinfeld. I'm aspiring to a show that's universal, but also it’s 2019, 2020, reflective of the country we live in in an aspirational way, in a celebratory way. So, I had been thinking about the idea of a show for a while, and I have the chance to meet Mike Shaw and Matt Murray. Mike of course created Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and a whole bunch of other shows that are on the air. The idea of teaching a citizenship class was something we all thought was very interesting because it was immediately patriotic, authentically diverse without needing to explain why it is. It would take place in Queens, which I have an affinity for, because it's the most diverse place in the United States.

HANNAH: Sunny Side lends itself to a really nice name for a show as well.

PENN: Yes. Originally I thought it should be set somewhere in Flushing, which is an awful title for a show. So we ended up with Sunny Side. But the characters themselves—they have to be relatable. They've got to be uplifting. I wanted to be able to poke fun at and talk about issues that are relevant, so there's a whole runner—one of the characters is undocumented. There's a whole runner about DACA and the DREAM Act. He's also a frat boy who didn't happen to know he was undocumented, like a lot of dreamers. We had the chance to do a whole first season. Fingers crossed for the second one. But that was the whole reason to make it. I wanted it to be relevant and timely but also universal.

HANNAH: And funny.

PENN: It's got to be funny, first and foremost.

HANNAH: And relatable for a broad audience. It doesn't strike me that there is either an overt or covert political message. People are trying to grapple with these political issues and the issues around immigration in a way that's very human. But you're not trying to, or are you, trying to subtly indoctrinate your audience in any way?

PENN: No, we're not trying to subtly indoctrinate anybody in any way. That said, I'm not interested in the semantics of what people wish America was. The idea that so-and-so doesn't belong here, or America only means people who look like us in our tiny community in Kansas—no offense, but no, it doesn't, and that's not the reality of what America is.

HANNAH: It’s not even the reality of what Kansas is.

PENN: Well, exactly. Yes. We're not trying to make excuses for anybody, and we're not trying to play into anybody's semantics. So unapologetically, we are a very American show.

HANNAH: It's a very New York show, too. The diaspora.

PENN: The diaspora is very New York. What I loved about it was, for our show to do well—this is where I model it off of a Harold and Kumar, to some extent. When Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle came out, the powers that be said America is not ready for a comedy with two Asian-American men as the leads. I said, “I totally disagree. All white people are going to watch that movie. Totally disagree.” The movie came out. It didn't do well at first. It actually tanked at the box office. I thought, wow, maybe these guys were right. Is this the country I know and love and was born in? Is that a different country than the one that consumes the same content I like? Then it comes out on DVD, and people go crazy and start buying it and showing it to their friends everywhere, not just in the New York and San Francisco and L.A.s of America. That is what we're going for with this, which is that it is a very New York story, but we wanted it to be a very patriotic comedy. I want you to be deeply conservative and love the show because you love the characters, period; you think they're funny. I was driving through visiting some family in the South over the holidays and stopped in Georgia. This woman said to me—totally unexpected and unprompted, by the way, “I just want to thank you for Sunny Side.” It’s a new show, so there aren’t a lot of people stopping us on the street about Sunny Side just yet. I said, “Thank you.”

She said, “I have to tell you it reaffirmed my queer identity, reaffirmed my American identity.” She's a white woman who lives in rural Georgia. She said, “The community I live in is not reflected in the show you've created, but I'm reflected. And we all are part of that story you're telling without us even recognizing it. So, I just want to say ‘thank you’ for that.” My mind is blown because, of course, that's not the reason you create a comedy. The reason you create a comedy is to make people laugh. But that second layer, which goes back to your cultural diplomacy question in a way, is if we can celebrate the best in each other and break down barriers we've falsely put up about the things that divide us, I think it's a beautiful thing.

HANNAH: That's all the time we have for our guest, Kal Penn. I want to thank him very much for joining us. His show, Sunny Side, is terrific. You can see it on the NBC app as well as Hulu and Roku. I commend it to you. Also, thank you very much for listening to our show, None of the Above. This has been another episode.

I am Mark Hannah of the Eurasia Group Foundation. If you like what you heard, please do find us on Apple podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere you get podcasts. Tell your friends about us. Please rate and review us. It means a lot. And send any suggestions for episodes to our email inbox at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Catch you next time.

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