As the Hollywood Reporter reports, there is a significant disparity in the Asian-American/Pacific Islander representation in Hollywood. The Asian portion of the designation received the bulk of the representation. At the same time, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were left to be represented by five men, most notably Jason Momoa and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
In April’s report, the McKinsey Company’s authors note that companies are leaving billions of dollars on the table by not substantially engaging diverse audiences. “As our research and analysis have demonstrated, executives don’t need to act out of altruism,” they write, “The reward for getting it right could create real impact for the industry — and the prize will only grow. Progress may not be easy, but when the enhanced richness of storytelling is accompanied by a multi-billion-dollar opportunity, the business case is clear.”
In March, a similar devaluing of Latinx representation both in front of and behind the camera was evaluated by McKinsey, and as one Latinx producer told the company, “There is no shortage of actors. Almost a surplus of writers. The broken part is the business side: they don’t know how to support or market content made by Latinos.”
Additionally, the writers of the report directly tied the roles of Black and Latinx off-screen talent together; both groups are inevitably tasked with providing members of their ethnic groups with jobs.
“As with Black representation in film and television, Latinos who rise to prominence in the industry play an outsize role in providing opportunities to other Latino talent: the likelihood of a Latino producer, writer, or lead signing on to a project is an average of 15-fold higher if the director or showrunner is Latino,” the authors wrote. “Given that only 5 percent of films have Latino directors and 1 to 5 percent of TV and streaming shows have Latino showrunners, Latinos’ ceiling of opportunity is low.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
