Dax Shepard and Monica Padman Defend ‘The Good Place’ Producer Megan Amran Over Racist Tweets
It’s Internet 101: what you say on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. As so many celebrities have learned the hard way in the past, old tweets have a way of coming back to bite you on the behind, and this is even more true when it comes to racist tweets. There is never an excuse to say racist things, especially on the internet where they can really hurt people. But celebrities somehow keep making this mistake time and time again.
One of the latest public figures to receive public backlash for racist jokes that she tweeted in the past is Megan Amran, a producer on the hit series The Good Place. She managed to offend both disabled people and Asian-Americans with one tweet, but some of her celebrity friends are coming to her defense.
Who is Megan Amran?
Amran was a co-executive producer and writer on the show The Good Place, which ironically follows four perfectly imperfect humans as they strive to become better people when they find out they’ve been placed in “the bad place” (otherwise known as hell) after death. The show was created by Parks and Recreation‘s Michael Schur and has received immense critical acclaim. It ran for 4 seasons until its series finale early this year.
Amran has also written for Silicon Valley, Parks and Recreation, and The Simpsons.
Amran’s racist tweets
Back in 2011, Amran decided to try to be “funny” by tweeting jokes that only ended up offending both disabled people and the Asian American community. One of her offensive tweets reads: “It’s not politically correct to say “retarded” anymore, you have to call them “Asian-Americans,” reports Deadline. Ouch. Here’s another one of Amran’s attempts at humor: “I can never tell the difference between your/you’re/Asians”. There was another tweet that was discovered which insulted Jewish people: “If I had a time machine, I’d go back and kill Hitler and all of the Jews and gypsies and gay people.”
Understandably, fans were outraged when these tweets were uncovered, and Amran ended up publicly apologizing. She wrote in a statement, “I will be sorry for as long as I live that I have hurt even one person, and I very much understand why my words have hurt many more. Also, I specifically would like to apologize to the Asian American community, who I have hurt most with my tweets. I very much understand why you are hurt.”
She also spoke to how much she says she’s grown in the 9 years since these tweets were published, stating: “An apology means nothing without action and change behind it, and I assure you that the reason these tweets are from years ago is because action and change IS behind it. As my platform grew, I learned the power I had to amplify voices and the responsibility that came along with it.”
Dax Shepard and Monica Padman defended Amran
Actors Dax Shepard and Monica Padman are both connected with The Good Place in their own ways: Shepard is married to Kristen Bell, who plays the show’s protagonist Eleanor, and Padman once had a cameo playing Eleanor when she, due to a malfunction in The Good Place‘s universe, starts taking on different appearances. Both actors recently defended Amran during a podcast episode of Armchair Expert.
“Look, I also don’t think those are good tweets; I don’t think she should have tweeted them. But, we know her and she hasn’t written anything like that in eight, nine years. And so for me when I see that I’m like that is how you measure change, how someone has evolved and changed … She has changed a lot, I think,” Padman stated. Shepard added, “Inviting judgment in 2020 for things you said in 2006 is just a bad idea, because, again, we do lose sight of how different things were. I was a part of storylines in 2004, ’05, ’06, you just wouldn’t be in those storylines now … It’s so funny because I know her. I know how unequivocally she’s on the side of good. So I read her tweet with the most good faith I possibly can.”
It seems like these two think that Amran deserves a second chance; we’ll see if the disabled or Asian American community feels the same.
