"I say this not to just flagellate myself or to show off what a great guy I am," says Raphael Bob-Waksberg, "but because I want to put this on the record and to hold myself up to this when I go about making other shows. Also so that other white people making shows can see that this has been something that I have wrestled with, (instead of) looking at my show and saying, 'Oh well, he did it and it’s OK, so maybe it’s not that big a deal.' I would (also) like to be very open that my guilt does not solely come from a place of white progressivism. I do think that the show has been hurt by our all-white cast." Bob-Waksberg points to Alison Brie's casting as an Asian-American woman. "For a long time, because we cast a white actress to play Diane, I was afraid of this conversation happening," he says. "And because of that, we really downplayed her race and her cultural heritage. We’ve treated her basically like a white woman because I didn’t want to have a white woman playing an overtly Asian character, because that felt somehow more wrong to me. And now I feel the opposite. We did a complete disservice to the character by making her so white. Obviously what white-coded means is subjective, and there are Asian women who relate to Diane and I don’t want to discount their experiences. But I do think we have avoided stories that could have been more interesting because of my own fear and guilt about the casting."
TOPICS: BoJack Horseman, Alison Brie, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Asian Americans and TV, Diversity