Carrie Kemper is something of a workplace-comedy veteran. After writing for “The Office,” she’s now a writer and supervising producer for HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” a show about the perpetually embattled startup Pied Piper. Co-created by Mike Judge, who also created “King of the Hill” and “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “Silicon Valley” skewers tech culture — in one episode in the first season, a succession of startup founders claim to be “making the world a better place” with highly specialized products like “software-defined data centers for cloud computing.”
Ms. Kemper has some familiarity with the subject matter — she went to Stanford and later worked at Google. In an email interview, she talked about female representation on “Silicon Valley,” the show’s influence on the real Valley and the possible origin story of Jared, Pied Piper’s cheerful but bizarre head of business development.
How does your experience in the real Silicon Valley compare to what happens on the show?
I have to say, it’s incredible how perfectly Mike Judge nailed Silicon Valley culture right off the bat, in the pilot of the show. I didn’t write on the first season, but I watched it thinking, “I know that guy. And I know that guy. And I know that guy.” Scenes in Erlich’s hacker hostel kept reminding me of the countless hours I spent at the horribly filthy Stanford humor magazine office. For whatever reason, along with Humanities majors like me, the magazine attracted weird, funny computer science majors, and I’d often find myself creating bad comedy with CS guys at 3 in the morning. In the “Silicon Valley” writers’ room, whenever we’re tasked with pitching “small, observational stories,” I think back to those days, when I’m pretty sure I saw a guy who had been living in the office wash his feet in the sink, or when that same guy decided to move out of the office because a rat scampered across his body while he was sleeping.
“Silicon Valley” makes fun of lots of aspects of tech and startup culture, from silly job titles like “chief evangelism officer” to grandiose ideas about changing the world. Three seasons in, do you think it’s influencing that culture at all? Do people in Silicon Valley watch “Silicon Valley”?
I am continually surprised by the number of people working in the tech industry who watch the show. But I think it’s a testament to the material, and to our brilliant tech consultants, and to the seemingly limitless human capacity for vanity.
As far as the extent to which the show is influencing the culture, we did hear that one company no longer uses the phrase “making the world a better place,” because of its association with the show. (Which was actually very frustrating to them, because, as they insisted, they really are making the world a better place.)
The show got criticism when it first aired for featuring relatively few women, though it’s added some female characters since then. Is female representation something the writers talk about? And do you feel an added responsibility (or pressure) to think about gender as a female writer on the show?
We definitely talk about female representation in the writers’ room, and both of our showrunners, Mike Judge and Alec Berg, are very sensitive to the issue. As a female writer, I sometimes worry too much about how our female characters are represented; I remember rewriting a scene in which Gavin Belson has one of his lackeys present a bulldog to the Hooli board on an office chair and then orders that same lackey to wheel the dog away. Everyone was picturing Patrice, played by the very funny actress Jill Alexander, as the lackey, and I said, “I don’t know, will that make it seem like Patrice is an assistant, and not an executive like Scott and Rogelio?” Another writer pointed out that Jill would have the funniest reaction, and I realized that by trying to “empower” a female character on the show, I almost cost a female actor a funny bit in the show that she ended up totally nailing.
Your sister, Ellie, stars on “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” What would a “Kimmy Schmidt”/“Silicon Valley” crossover look like?
Wow, excellent question. It would be a truly fascinating clash of comedic tone. But I think a Kimmy/Jared romance would make a lot of sense. At this point, it’s safe to assume Jared was also held in an underground bunker for most of his childhood. Honestly, who’s to say Jared isn’t the boy in “Room,” all grown up?
Would you rather work for Dunder Mifflin or Pied Piper? Why?
Dunder Mifflin, hands down. As much as I enjoyed staying up until 3 am in college with CS nerds, I’m 32 and pregnant now. I’m Pam, dammit. I need sleep and a steady income.
Also, close your eyes and think about how bad Erlich’s house must smell.