Over at Salon, TV critic Sonia Saraiya weighed in on the Women in Tech conversation in discussing the upcoming season of HBO's Silicon Valley and celebrating the addition of a new female character and cast member to the series.
Excellent! Who wouldn't be happy about that? The column goes smoothly until the fourth paragraph when, well:
So @salon did a Silicon Valley review & said I'm a regular on Big Bang Theory. cc @kunalnayyar http://t.co/CpwnHAI68o pic.twitter.com/qH0SkRxlzF
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) April 10, 2015
Oops! Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjani actually isn't on The Big Bang Theory. That would actually be British-Indian Kunal Nayyar, who plays Dr. Raj Koothrappali on the CBS sitcom. Soon after Nanjiani's tweet, Salon corrected the article without a correction. Hey Salon, once you put something on the Internet, it's there forever.
Eventually a correction was noted at the top of the piece, and Saraiya felt pretty bad about the mistake and apologized on Twitter:
I made a huge mistake in a review I wrote and I am very sorry to have done so. It should be updated.
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
My sincerest apologies to @kunalnayyar and @kumailn, who are NOT the same person.
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
FYI, the article in question has been corrected and updated. This was absolutely my own error in fact-checking. pic.twitter.com/MklIuSpZIw
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
I'm so sorry to @kumailn for conflating him with another Indian actor. It was a facile, easy-to-check error, and I should know better.
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
I'm not proud.
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
Especially as Kumail is Pakistani-American.
— sonia saraiya (@soniasaraiya) April 11, 2015
It feels good to know that was all sorted out. I think we all learned a little something about Christmas, today.
