Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Frances McDormand won Best Actress for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” at the Oscars and told actresses to seek out an inclusion rider for their films. In Hollywood, actors and actresses can seek equality clauses or inclusion riders stipulated by big-name talent for their contracts. This allows bringing better inclusion of gender, racial, and ethnic representation in film. An “inclusion rider” is a clause in an actor’s contract that requires the cast and crew be diverse in order to retain the actor. Certainly, that was a big call by McDormand at the Academy Awards.
McDormand took to the stage to receive her award; after thanking her family she asked all the other female nominees to stand up. She then urged producers to back their projects, and then wound up saying: “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ‘inclusion’ and ‘writer’.” It is the second time McDormand, a five-time Academy award nominee, has picked up the best actress statuette, following a 1996 win for her performance in Fargo.
Here are some reactions on social media to McDormand’s Oscars speech and inclusion rider.
She wasn’t really talking to me, but I stood up for Frances McDormand #oscars #inclusionrider
— Michelle Tan (@MichAnnTan) March 5, 2018
I didn’t think it was possible to love Frances McDormand more #inclusionrider
— Laura Isaac (@movie_slinger) March 5, 2018
Preach, Frances McDormand! #inclusionrider #oscars — watching The Oscars
— Cami Nicole (@crazbeau) March 5, 2018
Female nominees, please stand up! ❤️ Frances McDormand #powerful #Oscars #inclusionrider
— Alexis Thompson (@lexandthecities) March 5, 2018
Brilliant idea: #inclusionrider !!! Let’s make this a real thing! #Oscars2018 “If you want my star power and talent, you are taking some talented folks who deserve a chance but can’t get one, with me. #allies #FrancesMcDormand
— Maureen Erwin (@moerwin) March 5, 2018
Despite Hollywood’s rising awareness of diversity issues and the growing movement in support of inclusivity, there has been little year-on-year rise in inclusion in films released in 2016, according to a new study of 900 popular films from 2007 to 2016. The study, from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity, and Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, analyzed nearly 40,000 characters for gender, race, LGBTQ status, and disability in 900 films, including the top 100 movies of 2016.
“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges”). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Academy Award winner Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Academy Award nominee Woody Harrelson), the town’s revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing’s law enforcement is only exacerbated.
The 90th Academy Awards comes amid a tumultuous period for Hollywood. #MeToo and the “Time’s Up” movements will cast a long shadow over the ceremony, hosted by Kimmel for the second year in a row. The allegations against Harvey Weinstein have roiled Hollywood. Three of his accusers are expected to be presenters. And the wide-open best picture race could make for some suspense in the final minutes of the show. “The Shape of Water,” which leads all films with 13 nominations, is locked in a tight race for best picture with “Get Out” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”