Today, Explained - Inclusion Riders, Explained

Episode Date: March 5, 2018

Quick bonus episode! Frances McDormand won the Academy Award for Best Actress last night for her performance in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” In her memorable acceptance speech, she asked all the nominated women to stand up and left them with two words: “inclusion rider.” Vox’s Caroline Framke explains how inclusion riders could force Hollywood to change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, quick little thing. And the Oscar goes to... Frances McDormand, three billboards outside of the concert. Frances McDormand won Best Actress last night to absolutely no one's surprise. So I'm hyperventilating a little bit. If I fall over, pick me up because I've got some things to say. And it all came down to two words. Inclusion rider. So, quick little bonus episode.

What do those two words mean? I asked Vox's Caroline Franke. A rider is part of a contract that when a star is negotiating to be part of a project, they can use to mandate their terms. An A-lister who uses an inclusion writer as part of their contract can mandate that their crew is more diverse. They can mandate that more speaking roles go to women or people of color. This is a really important tool that someone who is in a position to make demands can use in order to change what movies look like to make it look more like our world. At USC, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has been studying inclusion on screen and behind the scenes.

To count in one of my investigations, all a character has to do is say one word. This is a very low bar. Stacey Smith is a USC professor. She focuses on inclusion in media. Across 800 movies and 35,205 speaking characters, less than a third of all roles go to girls and women. And if you compare our results to a small sample of films from 1946 to 1955, there's been no change in over a half of a century. Frances McDormand, having worked in the industry for 35 years, didn't know that an inclusion writer was something that she could include in her contract. The fact that I just learned that after 35 years of being in the film business, the whole idea of women trending, African-Americans trending, no, no trending. It changes now.

You know, not everyone is going to be in a position where they can demand an inclusion rider. If you're just starting out in Hollywood or if you're still getting your footing, making demands like that, unfortunately, can make you seem like a problem. But if you're someone like Frances McDormand, if you're someone like George Clooney, if you're someone like Meryl Streep, if you know that you can have an inclusion rider and you use that, then you can really make a difference. And most of the people who could make that happen were in the room with Frances McDormand when she said that. So it'd be very hard for them to ignore it from now on. It'll be really hard for their agents to ignore that from now on. We've seen so many people talk a big talk about supporting women

and wanting to be more diverse and blah, blah, blah. But what Frances McDormand did with her speech was to give a very practical, logical way for people to help. And she made sure that they couldn't ignore it. Caroline Framke writes about culture for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos-Verm. This is Today Explained. explained.