David Spade Questions Hollywood’s Race and Gender Labels

David Spade is questioning Hollywood’s habit of putting race and gender ahead of the work, arguing that the industry’s political labels can undercut its message of equality. During a recent episode of their Fly on the Wall podcast, Spade and Dana Carvey took aim at the way award shows and TV productions highlight those differences. Spade said Hollywood should “stop separating us like that.” He pointed to award announcements that single out a winner’s race. To Spade, treating performers as actors without adding a racial label would put them on more equal footing. Carvey made the point with a joke. When he won his Emmy Award, he said, the announcement identified him as the “198th straight white male that has won this award.” Jim Carrey | Madonna Stories & What NOT To Say | Dana & David Spade recalled hearing similar labels while working on NBC’s Just Shoot Me. He said someone would tell him whenever a female director was coming in that week. “I [would] go, ‘That’s fine. Just is it a director? Yeah. Okay, we got it.’ Like you don’t even have to say that,” Spade said. To him, the label made a distinction that didn’t need to be there. Carvey agreed that “female director” is “a f...