Kumail Nanjiani Calls for More Diverse Roles (“I Want to Play a Bad Guy!”) at THR’s Raising Our Voices Event
The Hollywood Reporter held its third annual Raising Our Voices luncheon on Wednesday, celebrating some of the industry’s most powerful advocates for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
STARZ #TakeTheLead served as presenting sponsor for the event, which took place at Spago in Beverly Hills and welcomed stars including Annette Bening, Kumail Nanjiani, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez and Baby Reindeer breakout (and Emmy nominee) Nava Mau. The luncheon, with ACLU and East West Bank as additional sponsors, was tied to the release of THR‘s Forces for Change list, recognizing top figures for their role in improving inclusion in Hollywood.
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Following red carpet photos and mingling — with guests including Gloria Calderón Kellett, Trace Lysette, Lilly Singh and execs Karey Burke, Ayo Davis and Jamila Daniel — the event kicked off with remarks from THR president Joe Shields and deputy editorial director Jeanie Pyun, who introduced a clip from The Bridge, a documentary film that the East West Bank Foundation commissioned to honor the shared journey of the AAPI experience.
THR co-editor-in-chief Nekesa Mumbi Moody then presented STARZ with the Trailblazer Award for its #TakeTheLead initiative — the network’s commitment to amplify narratives by, about and for women and underrepresented audiences with authentic storytelling on and off the screen — and brought STARZ president of original programming Kathryn Busby to the stage.
“Representation matters deeply to us at STARZ. #TakeTheLead is not just a slogan; it is our mission, it is our north star,” the exec told the crowd, noting that the network “is proud to champion the voices that have too often been sidelined. As we continue in this movement, we will not slow down and we will not go back.”
Busby also noted that the award reflected a simple idea: “That our industry can reflect, embrace and celebrate the full spectrum of the human experience. I am delighted to be a part of that change.”
THR contributing editor Stacey Wilson Hunt then led the first of the day’s two panels, an “Achieving Gender Equity in Storytelling” conversation presented by STARZ #TakeTheLead. Three Women showrunner Laura Eason and director Louise Friedberg, Women in Film CEO Kirsten Schaffer, Fancy Dance and Passing producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, and Frida director-editor Carla Gutiérrez took part in the discussion.
The group talked about creating female-focused work and the challenges that come along with it, particularly when it comes to financing and studio support today in Hollywood. Eason admitted, “I think we all are feeling this contraction at the moment, and I’m hoping we’ll come back,” with Three Women appearing to be “a little bit of the tail end of the doors really being open to make what we want to make, and to really have a lot of financial support.”
“That feeling I think that everybody has — that women, people of color, people with disabilities, transgender people, nonbinary people are all feeling, this kind of pushback — it’s real. We’re seeing it in the numbers,” Schaffer said, pointing to WIF’s annual reports on diversity in TV and film production this year. “I think a lot of us feel it culturally and we also feel it in the business,” though intimacy coordinators were a small bright spot.
Coming off the success of Barbie, in particular, Schaffer added, “This conversation that’s been happening about risk is I think what a lot of women and nonbinary people face every day. We are not risky. We make money for the studios and streamers. So take that ‘risk,’ and there will be a return.”
Bening took over as moderator for the second panel, called “Freedom to Be: The Future of Trans Visibility,” presented by ACLU. She was joined by Mau, Rodriguez, 9-1-1: Lone Star actor Brian Michael Smith and ACLU lead attorney for LGBTQ+ legal cases Chase Strangio.
“I’m here because there is so much fear and ignorance right now in the atmosphere — in the political atmosphere, in the social discourse around trans people — and it is so destructive and it is so wrong,” Bening, whose oldest son Stephen Ira is trans, said to start out the conversation. “I don’t know what it’s like to be trans, but I know what it’s like to be a parent, and I am so grateful for this experience, because it has opened up my mind and my soul and who I am as a human being in a way I never could have imagined.”
The star continued, “There is no reason to be frightened if you have a trans child or a gender-questioning child. What kids and families need is support and love and information and counseling and medical care. It’s not complicated.” Later, Bening also questioned, “Why so many public people who aren’t even in the political sphere, but are more in the cultural sphere, shall we say, choose to treat trans people with derision as being the other, as being less than? I don’t understand it. I find it heartbreaking and enraging.”
During the panel, Mau credited Baby Reindeer creator and star Richard Gadd for uplifting her in a way she had never seen a cis man do for a trans woman before, explaining, “We can find love with each other. We can find understanding with each other. And so it’s been incredible now that audiences around the world have gotten to witness one relationship like that, and I think that it has led them to interrogate what it means for them and what relationships they might be having with trans women.”
As one of the few trans actors on network TV, Smith also acknowledged the responsibility of, “I’m in this position to represent a character that is going to be in the houses of people in these rural and Middle American counties who don’t know that they know a trans person. So if I’m going to be the only trans person they know, I want to be as authentic as possible and as truthful as possible.” Rodriguez added of the trans community, “We are complex, we have so many dimensions to us, and I think the best thing that we can do is align and create together. That is how you make a movement.”
Following the panel, THR co-editor-in-chief Maer Roshan introduced Nanjiani, bringing him to the stage to deliver the event’s closing keynote. Right off the bat, Nanjiani said he wanted to thank Spago and chef Wolfgang Puck for “accommodating my cat-only diet,” a reference to Donald Trump’s comments in Tuesday’s debate about immigrants eating pets.
The comedian also joked he had just a seven-minute speech to solve Hollywood’s diversity problems and questioned why people of color are given the task of trying to fix it. “Next time you do this, there should be like two people — there should be someone like me, talking about the importance of diversity and diverse points of view, and then a white person off to the side taking notes and nodding,” he said. “We have been raising our voices, but the people in power need to also be listening to our voices.”
Nanjiani continued, “Of course, having more diversity onscreen and behind the screen is good for society as a whole — it is but I fear that isn’t enough incentive for the three corporations that run this town. So I’ll say this: Diversity behind and in front of the camera is good for profits. It’s good for your bottom line. It will make you more money,” while also calling for people of color to not just be in projects about their cultures, but about stories unrelated to their backgrounds.
“With diversity onscreen, you may think, ‘How will the audience relate to someone who doesn’t look like them?’ Well, I’ve been doing it my whole life. I’ve looked at white guys in movies made by white guys my entire life and pretended to be them,” he said, joking, “Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the biggest movie stars of all time. You think his audience is exclusively 6-foot-2 behemoths who can bench 500 pounds and sound like they got here from Austria earlier today?”
The Big Sick star spoke specifically about the need for more complex roles for people of color, saying, “I want to play a bad guy. When I say that, people say, ‘What kind of message is it sending if you play the bad guy?’ The message it’s sending is that we’re just like everybody else: We’re complicated. We can be saints and sinners, we can be nerdy guys and terrorists and video gamers and superheroes and divorced people and family people. And some of us are good people, and yes, some of us are bad people, because we are people.”
In closing, Nanjiani declared, “I am not saying you have to have every kind of person represented in every movie or TV show; I’m just saying don’t exclude us. Make your movies and TV shows look like the world. That’s all we want.”
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