'We're not here to right the wrongs of society': Showrunner of 'Silicon Valley' on the lack of women in the series

John P. Johnson/HBO

The INSIDER Summary:

• Alec Berg is the showrunner of HBO's "Silicon Valley."
• Like the real industry its based on, the show doesn't have a large number of women cast in major roles.
• Berg says the writers "put a lot of thought into" the satire and says their role is "to hold up a mirror to it" as opposed to faking "the tech business as a more gender inclusive place."
• Berg also said "we're not a social justice show and we're not here to right the wrongs of society. We’re comedians."

"Showrunners" is a new podcast from INSIDER, a series where we interview the people responsible for bringing TV shows to life. The following is a highlight from our interview with Alec Berg — the showrunner of HBO's "Silicon Valley" and previous writer for "Seinfeld" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

HBO's "Silicon Valley" is a satirical comedy series that takes a sharp look at the booming tech industry in northern California. In the second episode of INSIDER's new podcast series "Showrunners," we spoke with Alec Berg to learn more about "Silicon Valley" and his role when it comes to running the show. 

Over the course of its three seasons so far, "Silicon Valley" has been criticized for not featuring many women in major roles. When INSIDER asked Berg if the writer's room of "Silicon Valley" kept things like the Bechdel test in mind, here's what Berg said:

"Constantly. Absolutely. No, no, no, look, it is a constant discussion. We have gotten a lot of scrutiny and some flack — some deserved, some I think not so — about 'where are the women?' and 'why aren’t you doing more stories about how there are not women in tech?'

Look, we go back and forth on it a lot, and we do put a lot of thought into it. If there aren’t more women and more stories about women in tech on the show, it’s not out of, I think, gender bias or some misogyny. For us, it’s a failure for us as satirists that we haven’t figured out more interesting ways of satirizing and making comedy hay out of those issues.

HBO

The idea that we should somehow portray the tech business as it should be as opposed to how it is, I think is horses---. What good do we serve? If the show was just 50% women, what good are we doing? We’re just masking. Part of the point of satire is to point out the flaws in reality.

Look, season one, at the end of the season, the guys go to TechCrunch Disrupt. We went up to the real TechCrunch Disrupt and we brought cameras with us, and we shot some footage, which ended up in the show. At the end of the first season I showed a few episodes to a friend of mine, a woman who works in tech, and she said, "You've got to put more women in this show. Those crowd shots that you created at TechCrunch Disrupt are crazy. You didn't put any women in those." I said, "Those are real. We shot those at the actual TechCrunch Disrupt." And we didn't frame the women out — there were no women in the room.

Do we have a responsibility to fake the tech business as a more gender inclusive place, or is our role to hold up a mirror to it and hopefully satirize and make jokes about it? You can debate whether we've done a good job of satirizing it or not, but the idea that we have a duty to portray it as something that it's not, I think is wrong-headed. I think we can do a hell of a lot more. Look, we're not a social justice show and we're not here to right the wrongs of society. We're comedians. At a certain point, we're trying to just make something that's funny and entertaining. If it's enlightening and pokes people to change their ways, great, but that's not our goal.

Listen to the full episode of "Showrunners" featuring Alec Berg below. Subscribe to "Showrunners" on iTunes here so you can hear new episodes (featuring the showrunners from "The Handmaid's Tale," "American Gods," "Insecure" and more) first. 

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