#Diversity
Issa Rae’s Long Road: When Are We Finally Going to Stop Wondering if Women of Color Are “Relatable”?
Five years ago, HBO greenlit Lena Dunham’s “Girls,” betting that the romantic misadventures of an educated, upper-middle-class twentysomething white girl and her friends were resonant enough...
Apply for a 10-Day Retreat for Women of Color Directors and Screenwriters
Spotting a woman director of color helming a studio film orshowrunning for a network can be like finding a Puya Raimondi — that rare flower that blooms every 100 years. There are plenty of...
Study: An Epidemic of Invisibility Afflicts Female, Racially Diverse, LGBT Characters
A new study from USC has found that Hollywood is failing pretty much anyone who isn’t a straight white man. A 700-film, 30,000-character study was undertaken by USC’s Media, Diversity, &...
2015 Emmy Nod Favorites: ‘Bessie,’ ‘Transparent,’ ‘Olive Kitteridge,’ Amy Schumer, Black Actresses
The Emmys are usually as staid as the entertainment industry gets, with the same group of people getting nominated and winning for the same roles year after year. There are a lot of old favorites...
Meet ‘The Nightly Show’s’ Robin Thede, Late Night’s First Black Woman Head Writer
Winners Announced For the HBO Diverse and Emerging Writers Fellowship, Six Women Chosen
Back in February we reported that HBO was launching a writing fellowship to find diverse and emerging writers. This week, the premium cable network announced the names of the nine aspiring writers...
Why Do Sitcoms Keeping It Real Offend You?
Theother night, at a bar I was far too tired to be at, I was talking to a writerfriend (of a friend) about the ever-talked about problem of diversity inHollywood. You see, bar conversations in...
Guest Post: Making Films for and About Canadian Native Women — And Competing at Karlovy Vary FF
SoniaBonspille Boileau is the first female director ofCanadian native origins (Mohawk) to have her debut feature premiere at a majorinternational festival. “Le Dep” premieres this Saturday, July...
Misty Copeland Becomes American Ballet Theater’s First Black Female Principal Dancer
Misty Copeland continues to change the face of ballet. On Tuesday, America’s best-known ballerina became the first African American woman to be promoted to principal dancer at the 75-year-old...
Women Are 25% of Academy’s New Members; Only Three Female Filmmakers Invited to Directors Branch
Since women are pushing for seats on the Academy board in record-breaking numbers, we hoped that, after being faced with a whole lot of very warranted criticism, the Academy would show an effort to...
How LA Film Festival Achieved Diversity by “Looking for People Who Are Seeing the World Differently”
The 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival features one of the most diverse programming slates among major festivals, with 40% of features directed by women and almost 30% helmed by filmmakers of color (not...
New Research from Women’s Media Center Concludes “Media On All Platforms Are Failing Women”
The Women’s Media Center has released their annual report tracking the status of women in both entertainment and the news. We’re feeling more optimistic about the future of women in Hollywood...
Update!: 115 Films By and About Women of Color, and What We Can Learn From Them
The response was overwhelming after we posted the original list of 84Films By and About Women of Color, which came from a recent Twitterconversation led by director Ava DuVernay. Not only was the...
84 Films By and About Women of Color, Courtesy of Ava DuVernay and the Good People of Twitter
If you were on Twitter recently, you might have seendirector Ava DuVernay’s clever call to social media to name films with “black,brown, native or Asian women leads” which were also directed...
New Arab Women Filmmakers Scholarship at UCLA Film School Announced
A new initiative to “give voice to the unique perspective of Arab women” has been launched as a partnership between the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (UCLA TFT) and the...
Ava DuVernay in the Running to Direct a Marvel Movie
One month after DC hired Patty Jenkins to helm the Wonder Woman movie, rival comics emporium Marvel has revealed that it’s pursuing Ava DuVernay to direct one of their “diversity” pictures,...
Quote of the Day: Shonda Rhimes: “I Make TV Look Like the World Looks”
“I really hate the word ‘diversity,’” announced Shonda Rhimes at the Human Rights Campaign Gala this past Saturday. The “Scandal” creator and “How to Get Away With Murder” producer...
A List of All of Women and Hollywood’s 2015 Oscars Coverage
The road to the 2015 Oscars was rocky indeed. While we were disappointed by the fact that white males accounted for the overwhelming majority of nominees — so much so that we commissioned a...
Study: Diverse Movies and TV Shows Earn More Money and Attract More Viewers
If you’re reading this site, chances are good you’ve heard of “Empire,” the new FOX drama that has increased its audience every single week since its series premiere seven weeks ago. There...
Studio Launched to Create Webseries and Digital Shorts for Women of Color
A new studio has been launched to create digital content for women of color. HB Studios will kick off with “Women on Top,” a 14-minute documentary directed by Leigh Davenport, in which...
Disney Introduces Its First Latina Princess — But Only on a Show for Preschoolers
As America’s largest minority group, Latinos make up 16% of the US population and 25% of domestic moviegoers. But last year, a study from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism...
Quote of the Day: Producer Nina Jacobson on How to Fix Broken Hollywood
High-profile producer Nina Jacobson (The Hunger Games franchise, Ryan Murphy’s upcoming American Crime Story) wrote a guest column for Variety’s Broken Hollywood feature, which focuses on...
USC Annenberg to Issue Report Cards Grading the Entertainment Industry on Diversity
In the aftermath of #OscarsSoWhite, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism is launching an initiative aimed at improving diversity across the entertainment industry. The...
Guest Post: #OscarSoWhite Includes the Documentary Category, Too
The 2015 Oscarnominations upset many people. When the Academy nominated the highlyregarded film Selma for Best Picture but snubbed its African-American femaledirector, Ava DuVernay, publications as...
Academy Awards President Cheryl Boone Isaacs Responds to ‘Selma’ Snub; Ava DuVernay Sends MLK Day Message
Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) once again disabused the notion that the Oscars have anything to do with merit by nominating Selma in just two categories, Best...
Watch: Jessica Chastain Calls for More Diversity in Hollywood
The Oscars have always been dominated by white men, but its demographic lopsidedness became a flashpoint of anger yesterday when this year’s nominations failed to include Selma director Ava...
DGA Study: “Women and Minority Directors Face Significant Hiring Disadvantage at Entry Level”
The Directors Guild of America has revealed the results of a five-year study examining the gender and ethnic diversity of first-time directors on scripted series. In the five-year span from the...
Disney Fans Makeover Newest Disney Princess
Women and Hollywood is on break this week. Please enjoy one of our most popular posts of the year below. We will return with new features, editorials, and news stories on Monday, January 5. After...
Learning from ‘Transparent’ and ‘OITNB’: There’s No Single Right Way to Do Diversity
We often talk about the need for diversity in Hollywood, but we rarely talk about how to do it. This leaves us with the clumsy approach in practice today, as writer Beejoli Shah discovered last...
‘Cristela’ and ‘Jane the Virgin’ Vanquish Latina Stereotypes
The World Doesn’t See Lydia Diamond As a Female Playwright
The dearth of women in the theater world is well documented. While the three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year were all women, not a single female playwright appeared on the Tony...
Study: Latina Women Most Likely to Be Naked On Screen
A new study spearheaded by Dr. Stacy L. Smith at USC’s Annenberg School confirms what we already know: Hollywood sucks at portraying racial diversity. But here’s a surprise: It doesn’t suck...
Quote of the Day: Octavia Spencer on How Her Oscar Changed Nothing
What’s the point of winning your industry’s highest honor if it doesn’t open up any more opportunities to succeed? That’s the sad but inevitable response to a new interview with Octavia...
Latina Women Are this Summer’s Hottest Demographic at the Box Office
According to a new study commissioned by TheWrap, this summer Latinas are buying more movie tickets than any other demographic. Latina women over the age of 25, in fact, go to the movies more often...
BFI Film Fund’s New Requirements Promote Diversity On and Off Screen
The British Film Institute Film Fund took a major step in championing gender, racial, sexual, class, and physical diversity yesterday by implementing new guidelines for financial support. Under the...
Out in the Night Traces an Attempt to Seek Justice for Queer Women of Color
In Newark, New Jersey, in May 2003, 19-year-old butch lesbian Sakia Gunn was stabbed to death after she politely turned down a sexual advance by an unknown man by telling him that she was a...
The Four Things I Learned on My Recent Trip to Hollywood
From my latest Forbes post on the four things I learned on my recent trip to Hollywood: People are talking and looking for ways to make in roads all across the business. From what I’ve noticed,...
Sundance London Directors: Meet Sydney Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest)
Writer-director SydneyFreeland’s feature debut, Drunktown’s Finest, was shotagainst New Mexico’s mesmerizing landscape and explores life on the reservationin the 21st century. The film...
Why Leslie Jones’ Controversial Slavery Sketch on SNL Was So Important
On May 3rd, Leslie Jones made her debut on Saturday Night Live. Jones was one of the three black women that SNL hired in January in response to the criticism over the show’s lack of diversity, and...
Belle Director Amma Asante Explains Why She Wanted Tell a Jane Austen Story With a Black Protagonist
There’s nothing quite like Belle on the contemporary film scene — a luxurious period film and a sweet, gentle romance that wears its keenly insightful politics on its silk sleeves. Belle is...
Watch: A Jem Fan Responds to the Movie’s Whitewashed Casting
Last week, Jem fan Lindsay Taylor took to YouTube to decry the whitewashed casting for Shana Elmsford, the shy African-American character in the 1980s cartoon about a group of foster kids who become...
Dreamworks to Make Adventure Movie With Black Girl Protagonist
If you caught Mr. Peabody and Sherman or Rio 2 in theaters, you probably also saw an adorable short called “Almost Home” about a group of aliens in a spaceship searching for a planet to...
Infographic: Black Inequality in Film
The good folks at the New York Film Academy have made another wonderful infographic, this time about black progress in Hollywood. Though the number of speaking parts for black actors (12.4%)...
90% of Summer 2014 Studio Movies Directed by White Guys
A comprehensive study of this summer’s major releases by The Wrap reveals that a dispiriting 90% of those films will be directed by white men. Jupiter Ascending helmer Lana Wachowski, along with...
Watch: How Kamala Khan Is Changing Comics and Readers
Kamala Khan isn’t just the first Muslim superheroine — she’s a one-girl revolution. Created by Marvel editor Sana Amanat, writer G. Willow Wilson, and artist Adrian Alphona, Kamala is the...
TV: Latina Women Demand SNL Hire Latina Comedienne After Offensive Caricature
Taking inspiration from the sustained campaign that led to Saturday Night Live’s hiring of Sasheer Zamata, the first black comedienne to join the cast in nearly seven years, Twitter activists have...
WGA Lobbying for NY Tax Breaks for Diverse Writers’ Rooms
The Writers Guild of America-East is currently lobbying the New York State legislature to receive tax breaks for diverse writers’ rooms. Of the $420 million in tax credits currently allocated to...
Women Comprise Majority of WGA’s 2014 Writer Access Project Honorees
Since 2009, the Writers Guild of America has held the Writer Access Project (WAP) — a competition that discovers and awards mid-level players from one of five diversity categories: minority...
Still No Plans for a Marvel Superheroine Movie
Here are all the upcoming movies that have been announced from Marvel from now until 2018: Captain America 2, Captain America 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Amazing Spider-Man 3, and The Amazing...
TV: The “Golden Age of Television” is Really White and Really Male
“’Crazy’ mistresses, nameless strippers, randy hookups, disgruntled daughters, dismayed wives.” That’s how TV critic Maureen Ryan sums up most of the female characters we see on True...
Trailer Watch: Quvenzhane Wallis in Annie
I (Melissa) grew up in the era of Annie. For my generation, it was our Wicked. It was the first Broadway show I saw and it helped spark my love of theatre. I carried around that red album to and...