The Set of Netflix’s ‘Patriot Act’ Sounds More Toxic Than Ellen
Netflix has had a number of attempts at talk shows and none of them have worked out for the streamer. Despite bringing in established stars like Joel McHale for a Talk Soup clone, Norm MacDonald doing celebrity interviews or Chelsea Handler for basically what she was doing on E!, none of their attempts have worked out. They even brought on Jimmy Carr to do a version of a British panel show and tried a grown-up version of Bill Nye the Science Guy that both only lasted a year.
Netflix’s latest attempt at a late-night show was Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, which sounds impressive at six seasons but less so when you realize each season was about a week’s worth of episodes of The Daily Show, the format Patriot Act was clearly inspired by. Now that it too has been canceled, former staffers have taken to social media to air their grievances with the production.
A lot of people have asked me to talk about Patriot Act. I avoided it because each time I relive the experience of being humiliated and gaslit, targeted and ignored, I sink back into days of depression. Tweeting this will probably not help me or anyone who has suffered.
— nur nasreen (@Nuri_ibrahim) August 20, 2020
Writer and producer Nur Nasreen was the first person to speak up, but others followed after her.
It was traumatizing to witness Sheila + Nur, intrepid producers who led some of our top episodes–Amazon, Saudi Arabia, Indian Elections—be silenced, treated unfairly + made to later doubt their own skills in a toxic newsroom.
They were not the only WOC who went through this. https://t.co/yED47UaoXB
— Amy Zhang (@azhang852) August 24, 2020
A running theme here is that women of color in particular were targeted for abusive behavior on the show.
i joke about PA & i take pride in the work i did there because thats how im dealing with having just lost my job. but there was a lot that went on behind the scenes with certain power dynamics that disproportionately affected the women of color on the show.
— zach silberberg (@zachsilberberg) August 21, 2020
The other thing they have in common is that they’re incredibly vague.
Without specific allegations, we can’t really say what was going on here or how serious it is. It does not sound good, though.
What I can say here is a point I find myself making over and over again; just because a piece of media espouses a political view does not mean the people making the show adhere to or even subscribe to those beliefs. The world is very politicized right now and everything is a culture war issue; nobody is more aware of that than Hollywood producers and brands. When they take a political stance, they’re doing it because it’s good for their bottom line, not because they believe in it.