Will Diversity Ever Be Synonymous with Best?

One of the things I most look forward to during the various awards seasons are the roundtables put on by The Hollywood Reporter. Though they are always more interesting in their print form (the videos are often hosted by writers I don’t like), they provide immensely interesting discussion points and analysis from the folks in the industry. The newly released piece that brought together many show runners was a wonderful inside baseball look into the tv world particularly when it comes to race.

I mean any time you put Lee Daniels in a room there’s sure to be some dramatics, we’d expect nothing less from the creator of Empire. He got the ball rolling on a really topical discussion of how race plays out on tv and in the business. What bothered me however was House of Cards showrunner Beau Willimon’s comments and replies to the topic of diversity. When Daniels asked the various people if they had any African American room, Willimon countered with the following exchange.

DANIELS Good. How many on your show? I’m just curious.

WILLIMON How many women do you have?

DANIELS We have three women.

WILLIMON How many Asian-Americans do you have?

DANIELS We have no Asian-Americans.

WILLIMON Just, it’s a weird question. But we have zero African-Americans in our writers room of six.

DANIELS I’m not here pointing a finger. I’m just curious.

WILLIMON There are so many different ways to talk about or measure diversity, and not all stories are going to tackle the entire breadth of the diversity of the world.

Willimon goes on to mention that as storytellers, the world of the story can be particularly narrow thus not focusing diversity. To this I have to call about 95% bullshit. This feels like an easy way of saying that because a show doesn’t have PoC in the lead that the world and the writers should reflect that. I remember during the first season of Girls that much ink was devoted to talking about how Dunham, for as gifted a writer as she is, had written, directed and produced a show set in New York yet with such a narrow focus, you’d think that Brooklyn was filled with nothing but white people, as opposed to what it actually looks like. Dunham has since included PoC in her show, maybe not to the degree we’d want, but its there. Willimon’s comments sting because they feel so lazy. So, so, so lazy. And from a writer with several Black characters on his show! Yes, not all stories tackle a wide breadth of diversity but when questioned about whether there are black writers on staff we get a grand total of four on 7 hit shows, you gon really sit here and act like its a weird question? And that retort about Asian Americans…Beau, this is not the oppression Olympics and you have in fact hit on Lee’s point about the dreadful diversity in writers rooms. Willimon’s retorts scream of people who get told they have privilege and react poorly.

Furthermore, this discussion about diversity got taken to another level by my personal nemesis Damon Lindelof. He said the following:

Let me preface this by saying that I take full responsibility for every decision that I have made professionally. That said, if I’m staffing a show, I’m going to get sent 40 scripts for people, and of those 40 scripts, how many of them were written by any people of color? Or women, for that matter? The pool that I’m being told that I should be picking from is a majority white male pool. And if you walk down the corridors of WME, CAA, UTA, you’re not going to see a lot of black agents, and they’re the ones who [would be] sending me those scripts. The most significant impact that we can have is to empower people, whether writers, producers or directors, who don’t look like us so that they can make hiring decisions. The Leftovers has a very strong female voice, and I sought out that balance behind the camera. Mimi Leder is our directing producer, and she said, “I’m hiring women directors.” The pool that she has to choose from for episodic directors is literally 20-to-1, but because she’s saying that’s really important and they’re out there and we’re going to find them, it’s happening.

WHEW. Let’s unpack this for a second. This comment came during a moment where the writers retreated to the lazy “we just want to hire the best people” and unbeknownst to them Lindelof came along to shake the table a bit. So many times we hear the reason why things are the way they are is because folks are looking for the “best” writers or saying they don’t see color. HOWEVER, as Lindelof points out, the pool that he’s being told by agents and folks in the industry is the best of the best is majority white male, meaning that according to the industry, white men are considered the best writers by default. We can’t beat around the bush and not infer that an industry that’s heavily comprised of white men would see them as the most employable. People have to take an active interest in fostering diversity, cause while yes the cream will rise to the top, it can’t rise if its trying to get through tiny pinholes in a block of cement called “best” aka “best of the majority white men we have”.

I guess after all this my question would be to the various showrunners, and Hollywood at large, is what do you plan to do? We’ve seen time after time that diversity is both bankable and critically lauded, so isn’t it about time it was considered best?