As we get closer to the election (national, state and local), we've all been thinking about the issues, what we want our next 4 years to be and who will get us to where we want to go. This month's cover is Kal Penn who we have enjoyed in House MD, Designated Survivor and of course the Harold and Kumar movies. Kal has always had an interest in civics and even took time from acting to serve during the Obama Administration as the Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.
We were excited to hear about Kal Penn's new show that launches on Sept 22nd, National Voter Registration Day on one of our favorite networks - FreeForm. In Kal Penn Approves This Message, he talks about the issues in this non partisan show to get voters prepared and empowered to vote. We find out more about this show that he hosts and executive produces, how it ties into FreeForm's larger PSA focus and what he was surprised to learn.
ATHLEISURE MAG: We know that you’re the Co-Executive Producer and the host of Kal Penn Approves This Message. Before getting into the show itself, why did you want to create this 6 episode series?
KAL PENN: That’s a great question. Over the last few years, I’ve had different producers and folks reach out and say that they had this political show and they were looking for a host and what I thought of it. Those shows were fine, but they were a little more vitriolic and polarizing than I would have liked. It’s not really my thing and so when we had this window of time during this pandemic, my writing partner Robin and I were brainstorming and we thought about shows that we liked. I liked the Daily Show and I love CBS Sunday Morning – so what if we combine the two and had a show that was funny first and comedy morning. The monologue instead of talking about the 24 hour news cycle, what if we made the monologue about a particular issue? It’s funny, but it’s nonpartisan and it’s issue based. That way your field piece which is very funny, would be an extension of that which is around the issue and then your guest instead of someone who comes on to sell a book - and there is nothing wrong with that as I hope to be able to do that one day soon BUT for now, what if your guest was someone who was an expert in their field as opposed to someone who needed to sell the book or the movie which is the traditional guest bookings. In that case, your interview should end with some sort of call to action that people could take regardless of their political views if they care about a particular issue. Leading up to the election, it seemed like the best way to couch that for the miniseries leading up to the Nov election. If we’re lucky enough to get extended beyond that, then it would be on civics things broadly. So that’s kind of how it all came together.
AM: That’s very cool!
KP: Yeah, thank you.
AM: How important is it to tackle the issues of the day to empower Millennials and Gen-Z voters when they’re hitting the polls?
KP: Very important! I think that you look at of course the Presidential Election takes up a lot of the airwave space. There are so many local and state elections like school boards that people are voting on and a lot of those things have an impact on our communities much more than who sits in the White House on a day to day basis. They all go hand in hand though.
Some of these elections are being decided on by just a handful of votes. That’s the difference between whether you and your 8 friends showed up to vote or not. It can be pretty critical. Even in terms of the Presidential Election, of course if you live in a battleground state, your vote is weighted so much more than if you're a NYer or in Oklahoma. But even in NY or in Oklahoma, we get this question a lot – “I’m a Conservative in NY or I’m a Progressive and live in Oklahoma, my vote doesn’t really matter right?” It’s like, no it does because if enough people with your point of view even move the needle to where you see, "wow we have a 2 or 3% uptick of Progressive voters in this district in Oklahoma or vice versa with Conservative voters in NY”, the people in positions of power have to take that into account. They have to decide, “am I going to represent these people or will they get replaced one day because I’m not,” with this district moving into a particular direction. It’s all those reasons. So man, it’s so important for those couple of reasons that make a difference.
AM: Was there a specific issue that you guys will focus on in these 6 episodes where you learned something surprising in that episode or something that you hadn’t thought about previously?
KP: There’s a lot yeah! Even in our first episode, it’s about the youth vote in general and how the voting age got to be 18. So we were like, “ok how did the voting age get to be 18?” I remember it’s the 26th Amendment and it was passed in the 70s right?
AM: Right!
KP: Ok, there was that, but then it’s like, how did that happen? And the point of origin for that is after WWII all of these service members were coming home and they were 18/19/20 years old and they had just fought the Nazis and they come home and they’re not allowed to vote because they’re not 21. So they start this movement to get the right to vote at 18 – the age that you could go off to war to die for your country. It took decade just for that to become the 26th Amendment and that’s insane that it took that long. The reason why we talk about it is that it is an opportunity to recognize why we all have the right to vote at 18 to begin with. Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or a Third Party person - it's all still relevant. The point is, you should vote when you turn 18 because you have that right and a lot of people worked very hard for a very long period of time to get us that right to vote.
AM: How excited are you as we know this show launches on National Voter Registration Day to be apart of this movement and this ongoing campaign that FreeForm as a network is doing in terms of PSAs to get this awareness out there?
KP: I love it because the FreeForm PSAs and stuff have been very uplifting, jokey and it’s not taking things too seriously, but it also is underscoring the real opportunity here for young people to participate. And that’s what I like about our show here too. Our set is essentially a celebration and we have a pinball machine and some fun jokey stuff, but there’s also a lot of books on the shelf from icons of American History. Everyone from Angela Davis to Ronald Reagan. Now you don’t think of Angela Davis and Ronald Reagan in the same sentence often, but the point of both of them is that these are people in American History who as things get more and more polarizing, one person may be more familiar with one of those humans than the other and they both played such a pivotal role in who we are today and why. The other pieces of the set are things that we celebrate. There is a whole bunch of imagery around women and science, astronomy and all of those things are because people decided to vote for candidates who used our tax dollars to fund these things. So those things belong to us. We should celebrate them. That space station is ours! I mean we share it with other countries so maybe that’s a bad example, but you know that stuff is stuff that we created together as Americans and we should be celebrating. To me, I think that that tone works really well with the tone with FreeForm and obviously Hulu which we air on the following day. It’s celebratory and that’s what we want. We want to be able to make people laugh, come together and to understand the issues a little bit better.
IG @KalPenn
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | FRONT + BACK COVER, PG 16-25 Freeform/Robbie Fimmano | FRONT + BACK COVER, PG 16-19 + 25 Editorial Design by Athleisure Mag |
Hear Kal Penn Approves This Message Executive Producer and host, Kal Penn on our show, #TRIBEGOALS - which is a part of Athleisure Studio, our multi-media podcast network! Make sure to subscribe to find out when the episode drops. You can hear it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and wherever you enjoy listening to your favorite podcast.
Read the Sep Issue #57 of Athleisure Mag and see Your Vote Counts with Kal Penn in mag.
