Miramax and El Rey Network have announced the directors for Season 3 of “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series,” and only one of the 10 episodes will be directed by a woman.
As a press release detailed, the list of directors includes several newcomers, one of which is Rebecca Rodriguez, sister and frequent collaborator of 1996's “From Dusk Till Dawn” director Robert Rodriguez. She will be making her television directorial debut, and is the first female director the show will have had in its three seasons.
We have a hard time believing that Miramax and El Rey were incapable of finding other female directors to take on an episode of the horror-drama series. Surely there are other women of the horror, thriller, or macabre genre who might want to take a stab at an episode. Just to name a few, there’s Karyn Kusama (“Jennifer’s Body”) Jennifer Chambers Lynch (“The Walking Dead”), Stewart Thorndike (“Lyle”), Mona Fastvold (“The Sleepwalker”), Tricia Brock (“Salem”), Gwyneth Horder-Payton (“Sons of Anarchy”), Larysa Kondracki (“Rogue”), Leigh Janiak (“The Honeymoon”), Nina Lopez-Corrado (“Stitchers”), Darnell Martin (“Grimm”), Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”), Mary Harron (“American Psycho”), Dearbhla Walsh (“Penny Dreadful”), Kari Skogland (‘Fear the Walking Dead”), Jen and Sylvia Soska (“American Mary”), Rachel Talalay (“Tank Girl”), Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”), Susanna White (“Bleak House”), Hélène Cattet ( “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears”), or former “Rue Morgue” magazine editor Jovanka Vuckovic, who is making her directorial debut in “XX,” the upcoming all-female horror anthology.
We also find it unfortunate that, while it’s great that Rebecca Rodriguez is making her directorial debut after years of editing, certainly the show’s producers could look further and find other female directors to join her this season.
As the DGA recently reported, women directed only 17.1 percent of television episodes during the 2015–16 season. A previous study from the DGA revealed that “women and minority directors face significant hiring disadvantage at entry level.”
Yet while “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” may only have one female director for its upcoming third season, that’s still better than shows that never had one at all. Shows that have ended, such as “Deadwood,” “Fringe,” and “Hannibal,” among others, got through multiple seasons without ever hiring a single female director. So far, “American Horror Story” has only had male directors, but Angela Bassett will be making history when she directs an episode for the upcoming sixth season. (The show’s creator, Ryan Murphy, has acknowledged, “I can do better.” He’s launching a foundation to help level the playing field for women, people of color, and LGBTQ directors.) And while popular series “Game of Thrones” has hosted the likes of Michelle MacLaren in the past, they’ve hired zero women to direct in Seasons 5 and 6.
