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One of the hottest topics at this year’s biannual meeting of the Television Critics Association was not any one show but diversity.
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CBS President Glenn Geller was pummeled by critics as soon as they got their hands on microphones about the network’s commitment to diversity, considering that all of its new shows star white men and are run by white men.
“You’ve had years to fix this,” said NPR’s Eric Deggans pointedly.
Geller essentially threw his arms up in agreement, “We have to do better,” he said, noting that the network has more diversity in its supporting roles than ever before, and it has Laverne Cox joining CBS’ midseason entry, Doubt, as the first transgender actress playing a transgender role on broadcast network TV.
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ABC’s Channing Dungey, who has the distinction of being the first black woman to lead a U.S. broadcast network, said ABC is “very proud that we reflect America authentically in all its diversity.”
ABC has won kudos from critics with its slate of Shondaland shows as well as comedies such as Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat, but Dungey still had to defend the lack of diversity on its reality shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
“I would very much like to see some changes,” Dungey said.
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FX’s John Landgraf proactively pointed to progress the network had made in hiring a diverse group of directors after being directly criticized in a piece by Variety’s Maureen Ryan in 2015. Landgraf told the room of reporters and critics that 51% of the directors hired by the network since then have either been women or people of color.
Showrunners working at The CW discussed how far they’ll go to stick to their commitment to diversity.
“It’s important for everyone up here to increase the level of diversity on our shows both in front of and behind the camera,” said Andrew Kreisman, who works with Greg Berlanti to produce all of The CW’s superhero shows. “In a show like Supergirl with a female lead, it’s important to have a female behind the camera as well.”
Berlanti backed that up by saying, “there are a lot of female directors out there who are the breadwinners for their families but they are also having to take care of their kids, so it’s challenging for them to have to shoot out of town. That just means we have to keep trying, we have to keep making offers. When we were producing Legends of Tomorrow, we made offers to direct to 20 women that we got passes on. But we kept our numbers up by asking the 22nd, 23rd and 24th person.”
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READ MORE: Variety, Vox, Wired
[Image courtesy of Variety]
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