The Hollywood Reporter recently sat down for a roundtable interview with some of today’s top comedy actresses to chat about everything from Hollywood sexism to Hillary Clinton to the price of fame, and when asked about late night’s glaring lack of women hosts, Amy Schumer, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s Ellie Kemper, Black-ish’s Tracee Ellis Ross, and Girls’ Lena Dunham did not hold back in their responses:
DUNHAM The idea of risk-taking is terrifying. I love Stephen Colbert, he’s a genius, but CBS [couldn’t] take the David Letterman slot and hire somebody who represented even an ounce of diversity? Also, when they got James Corden — another guy I love — there was this joke, “We’ve run out of white men here, we have to import them from England.†There is no shortage of established women who’ve been on the comedy circuit for years. It bums me out that someone like Kathy Griffin was relegated to Fashion Police. ROSS There’s a plethora of female talent, and it’s not just about moving someone into a late-night slot. KEMPER But it’s back to that thing — until you show a new formula can work, people are too scared to take a chance. DUNHAM When Letterman announced his retirement, I tweeted that [Parks and Recreation actress] Retta should replace him, and 10,000 people were like, “I would kill to see that.†Why don’t those opinions make it to the higher ranks? DUNHAM Les Moonves is asleep in a cave somewhere far away. I don’t know! ROSS We’re not making the decisions, obviously. SCHUMER I think people hate women. I don’t think they want to hear a woman talk for too long. A lot of people project their mom yelling at them. My [career] has been about tricking people into listening. I’m not saying all men hate women, but there’s such an aggression. DUNHAM The way women are spoken to in social media is truly shocking. It’s how you imagine people screaming at prisoners in Guantanamo.
Read the rest of the interview over at THR.