PRESENTED BY
Before I get into any of this, I want to say something, and I hope Ted will forgive the gushing.
When Ted asked me to contribute here, my first response was a mix of shock and awe. You see, to a whole generation who came up when I did — Ted Hope isn’t just a producer; he’s the gold standard. And when I was in film school in my mid-twenties, the films coming out of Good Machine were the pinnacle of what independent film truly could be — producers that took real risks on real voices; not just in the discovery and development of those voices, but the handing of power to the filmmaker as an artist. That’s why the first half of my career was in independent film, chasing that dream. Part of me still is. Suffice to say, I work within the belly of the Hollywood machine now and I genuinely love both worlds. So the fact that I get to contribute here, and talk honestly about the state of our business, is a true honor.
In 2016, I shifted from independent film production in Australia and Canada to literary management in Los Angeles. I knew I wanted to make a difference in this business by discovering and nurturing new voices and the two things I was genuinely good at (well, the only two) were identifying talent and script development.
As a first-generation Australian (of Lebanese heritage), I’ve always cared deeply about developing and nurturing diverse and women-led stories and storytellers. And the common refrain about Hollywood’s diversity problem is that it’s a hiring problem. It’s easy to point at the buyers, the studios, the financiers — the people at the top who green light and hire — and we’re not wrong to.
But, a decade into signing and representing talent, I need to talk about the layer underneath all of that. A layer I see clearly from where I sit in this business as a talent rep, because it deserves a spotlight if we’re going to be honest about what’s not working in our business and how to change it. The truth is before anyone gets hired for a job or a film is green lit, there’s an almost invisible filter that determines both who and which projects even get a chance to be seen. And while most of it comes down to information, or the lack of it, it’s a largely unspoken filter that deserves airing out.
We have a genuine problem in 2026
It’s not my intention to bash you over the head with stats, but there’s a reason why we need to look at the numbers before we can actually speak to and address the issue.
According to the findings of USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative that looked at 2025’s top films, women directed just 8.2% — which brought us back to 2008 levels, after reaching a high of 14.3% in 2024. And only four Black directors were hired — half the number working in 2007 — and four Latino directors (not a single Latina) across the entire top 100. The report notes most women who direct a top film never get hired for a second one, signaling the hiring gap.
Now, some in my comment section have argued that this is about merit; that the better, more highly acclaimed films are directed by men, but that’s not substantiated by the data. Across nearly two decades of research, USC Annenberg found no significant difference in critics’ scores between films directed by women and men. Women of color directors actually scored the highest of any group. This was never a merit gap — it’s a gatekeeping gap and it makes any rhetoric about parity performative and for optics, until it changes.
With respect to LGBTQ+ representation — the numbers are staggeringly low. LGBTQ+ characters were fewer than 1% of speaking characters in 2025’s top 100 films, with 78% of films missing LGBTQ+ characters entirely and zero trans characters.
Who’s to blame
We’ve referred to studio execs, financiers, sales agents, distributors as the “gatekeepers” for too long. But if we peel the layers back, it becomes clear that the true gatekeepers of the industry are the people who decide who even gets a shot — and those are the reps — the agents and managers building rosters that skew overwhelmingly white and male. If we take a look at UCLA’s 2016 Hollywood Diversity Report, partners at the top agencies controlling most of the industry’s talent were 96.7% white and 71.4% male. Specifically, the television show creators those agencies repped saw minorities outnumbered by more than 15 to one, the single widest gap researchers found anywhere in the industry. While there is no recent data, using my own observations in 2026, I fear not much has changed as it’s never truly been called out.
Why does this matter?
I vehemently believe that representation has a representation problem. The answer isn’t just more minorities working as agents and managers — even though that’s important. What I have come to believe over the nearly two decades I have been in this business, is that a huge amount of who “makes it” is decided before talent ever enters the equation: one by who is championing their voice; and two, access to information.
It goes without saying that reps tend to champion voices that feel familiar to them. If we’re starting from a place of bias, we’re less inclined to reach outside our comfort zone and sign talent that doesn’t look, feel, speak, or remind us of ourselves. I know this for a fact. It wasn’t until #MeToo, and the diversity initiatives agencies rolled out in 2018, that a very prominent straight, white male agent — a partner at one of the three-letter agencies — called me to say he’d never represented a woman and needed to remedy that. And he very delicately asked whether I had any women clients he could sign? Now, big points on self-reflection, I’ll give him that. But why did it take the public reckoning around the industry’s most despised man to force that kind of recognition?
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It’s obvious that agents and managers (as well as producers and executives) want to champion voices where they see their younger selves — and we saw that play out recently with young filmmaker Kane Parsons. He was just seventeen when James Wan and Osgood Perkins started mentoring him and A24 handed him one of the biggest bets in the studio’s history — and I think the real question is what those men saw in him — my guess was a kid who reminded them of themselves at that age, something they recognized without having to be told, an inbuilt confidence and willingness to give him the tools and resources to succeed. The same could be argued for nepotism in the business, but that’s a topic for another time. And this isn’t a knock on Parsons or any filmmaker that has proven themselves, but it’s worth naming what actually opens doors here, because talent alone rarely does. Somebody has to look at you and see a version of who they used to be.
And then there’s information: the basic knowledge of how this business actually runs — what to write, how you get repped, how you get read, how anything truly gets made — has never been evenly distributed. This information can be locked behind expensive workshops, panels, competitive labs, coverage services, and, most of all, proximity — knowing the right person. Again, nepotism is just the most visible version of this advantage. But some people in the business are handed a map early on that signifies not only their ability to navigate one of the most gate-kept industries but also a confidence that runs much deeper.
This is the parallel I keep coming back to, because it’s the foundation of everything I’m building — New Story, my Substack, the podcast that’s about to be launched. As a rep, I can confidently say talent is a prerequisite, but it’s not the thing that determines who succeeds. And if you’re on the outside with no map — if you’re a woman, a person of color, a queer filmmaker — you very likely feel this industry wasn’t built for you, and that there’s no real place for you in it.
I believe that information precedes confidence, and for some people, that confidence arrives pre-installed, if you will — a sense of entitlement that, if I can speak plainly, this industry has always handed more freely to men. But for filmmakers of color, for women, for LGBTQ+ storytellers, confidence has to be built, and it’s built on access to information. So when it’s guarded it doesn’t just cost people knowledge, it costs them the belief that they belong here at all. Why even try, when everything tells you the door isn’t yours to knock on? And if you’ve already experienced rejection, even a small bit, it starts to sound like a verdict: you were never good enough to begin with, so why keep going?
That’s the thing I’m actually trying to fix. Not just handing out information — handing out the confidence that comes with it.
So if I can leave you with one belief from my whole heart, it’s this: talent opens the door, but persistence is what keeps you in the room. Success belongs to the ones who refuse to quit. But you need the confidence to know you deserve a seat at the damn table. No one is going to hand you the keys — so you need to become the locksmith and craft your own key that allows you to walk into the door.
And truthfully, I have spoken with and mentored these writers and filmmakers, and I have sat in these rooms, and what I have learned is there is an overriding sense that everything is harder, everything is an uphill battle, and there simply isn’t a place for them. And the heartbreaking thing is that they’re not wrong to feel it, because the data backs this up. When you were never handed the information, and you don’t see yourself in the people that are getting the acclaim and accolades, let alone the representation on screen, it’s a conclusion any rational person would draw.
The life of an artist is not an easy path, you are going to be met with barriers and rejection. But it was never meant to be closed to you either.
Hollywood’s affinity bias and how to remedy it
The tendency to gravitate toward, trust, and champion the people who remind us of ourselves is ultimately an affinity bias and it always promises the replication of sameness.
I don’t think that Hollywood representatives genuinely want to exclude anyone in the talent pool, but if we’re looking at naming the gender and race bias we experience in the business as ‘systemic’ we have to name it. And I genuinely dislike that word as it feels like an opportunity to explain an ingrained way of doing things with no real accountability. If it’s truly systemic then who is responsible?
Dismantling the gates around the business truly starts with the democratization of information. If the map has been the barrier, then we need to hand out that map — freely.
And the other part is looking squarely at people like me — the representatives, the managers, the agents. We’ve simply got to do better. We must begin to ask ourselves, are we signing from a place of genuine excitement in the talent in front of us or what feels familiar?
I’m not letting the execs, the buyers, the sales agents, or the financiers off the hook — this is a hiring problem too. But we can’t keep waiting for the studios to fix it from the top. There are two things actually within our power: to educate, and to take honest ownership of our choices. One widens who gets to the door and the other clearly examines who we let through it.
Because I want to be in an industry where every voice and every story has a place. And I know audiences are hungrier for that than they ever have been.
