The city of Cupertino is 70.9% Asian. A new TV show set there ignores this.

The teaser trailer for the new CBS legal procedural “Cupertino” shows co-stars Mike Colter and Rachel Keller as they’re launching a new law firm that aims to take on the Goliaths of the Silicon Valley tech industry. 

The trailer positions Colter and Keller as underdogs, setting the stage for showdowns with battalions of lawyers who represent major companies like Apple, Google and OpenAI. However, despite their intentions to defend the underrepresented, the show itself appears to have a representation problem.

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Although it was filmed in New Jersey and New York, the show is set in its namesake South Bay city of Cupertino, a city of around 58,300 whose population is 70.9% Asian. Of the five actors listed on IMDb as being in all 12 episodes, none is of Asian descent. The only actor on the entire IMDb page who appears to be Asian is Nik Dodani, who is Indian American and plays a coder coming to the newly minted firm for legal counsel. (He’s listed as a “series regular” but is currently credited on only two episodes.) The trailer itself also appears oblivious to the demographics of the city, with board rooms full of nearly exclusively white men and hardly a single Asian extra to be seen.

The glaring lack of Asian actors has drawn criticism online. AsAmNews, an Asian American news source, wrote that “the lack of Asian American representation is a failure in reality.” A culture piece in the SF Bay Area Times touched on how H-1B visa workers from Asian countries are particularly vulnerable on the legal side, a reality that would make for some compelling plot lines. The blog 8Asianswrote that the show “seems to be expert in magic, as it has made Cupertino Asian Americans disappear!”

CBS did not respond to a request for comment before the time of publication. “Cupertino” premieres on Oct. 8.

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