NBC Cancels ‘Mail Order Family’ After Backlash

NBC Cancels ‘Mail Order Family’ After Backlash

NBC Entertainment has pulled Mail Order Family only 72 hours after executives announced the TV show. Jackie Clarke developed the show “based on her own experiences growing up in a home with the mail-order Filipina bride her father ‘purchased’ from a catalog, just a few years after her mother’s death.”

But people immediately protested the show, including Philippine women’s rights group Gabriela USA:

“Mail order brides are victims of human trafficking as they are forced into sex slavery and domestic servitude. Mail order-brides are vulnerable to violence because of the fundamentally unequal nature and imbalance of power where money is exchanged for an arranged marriage. Many mail-order brides become vulnerable to violence because they may be financially dependent on their husband, are isolated in a foreign country, and husbands can easily threaten them with deportation.”

NBC heard them loud and clear:

“We purchased the pitch with the understanding that it would tell the creator’s real-life experience of being raised by a strong Filipina stepmother after the loss of her own mother,” an NBC spokesperson told NBC News in a statement. “The writer and producers have taken the sensitivity to the initial concept to heart and have chosen not to move forward with the project at this time.”

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