The Jewish Women Who Are Revolutionizing Television

The blaring neon cover of Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television by Joy Press is scattered with the names of the high-powered women—producers, directors, and writers—profiled inside: Diane English, Roseanne Barr, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Shonda Rhimes, Liz Meriwether, Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, Jenji Kohan, Jill Soloway, and Abbi Jacobson & Ilana Glazer. If you are me, you immediately start counting. And yup, seven of those 12 are Jewish. Given that Jews constitute less than 2 percent of the American population, what are the odds?

Joy Press, who has been a TV critic for the Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, and now Vanity Fair, said she was surprised herself. “I don’t think I was explicitly thinking about writing about Jewishness,” she told me in an interview. “Truthfully, it was kind of surprising and fascinating how much of it came through in these women’s shows. There’s historically been a fear that Jewishness would be off-putting to a general audience…and for whatever reason Jewish women were seen as really off-putting. In the book, I mention the adage ‘Write Yiddish, Cast British,’ and if you look at the history of television, you’d be shocked how much it’s true. It’s a way for Jewish writers create characters that feel specific to them, while knowing they wouldn’t be able to get away with a Jewish actress or character. There is something unmistakably Jewish about the patrician family in Gilmore Girls, for instance. And Jill Soloway said, ‘I spent a whole career trying to hide Jewish women in shiksa characters.’”

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