Of Course, A 'Girls' Producer Made Donald Glover's Historic Emmys Wins All About Lena Dunham
The 2017 Emmy Awards was a huge night for people of color in television.
Atlanta creator and star Donald Glover made history as the first African-American to win an Emmy for directing a comedy. He also nabbed an Emmy Best Lead Actor in a comedy show. Riz Ahmed became the first man of Asian descent to win the Best Actor in a Limited Series for his role in The Night Of.
While most people celebrated Glover and Ahmed’s huge win for what they mean for minorities on the small screen, one person decided to credit their success to a series they both appeared in previously.
Girls' showrunner Jenni Konner quickly took to Instagram sharing a collage that featured pictures of both Donald Glover and Riz Ahmed during their stint on Lena Dunham’s HBO series writing, “Hannah has great taste in Emmy winners.”
Konner may have meant well, but fans quickly hopped on her comments checking her for the caption she posted. “Don’t make their wins about a fake character,” one commenter wrote.
Others quickly called her out for the racial undertones hidden in her message. “As if we needed reminding that girls was all about white-girl narcissism,” another commenter added. Banding together, someone else wrote, “this feels slightly like it is in poor taste and an unnecessary insertion of white women in the triumph of POC...especially given the show tokenized POC and gentrified the Brooklyn for the tv.”
No stranger to controversy, Girls has previously come under fire for the lack of minorities present in the series despite the fact that it was supposed to set in Brooklyn.