After Hulu canceled her show “High Fidelity” – a remake of the 2000 John Cusack fan-favorite based on Nick Hornby’s novel – actress Zoe Kravitz (daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet) ripped the streaming platform for its lack of diversity, especially shows starring women of color.
Upon the show’s cancelation, actress Tessa Thompson (“Thor: Ragnarok”) expressed her dismay, prompting Kravitz to issue a backhanded swipe at the streaming platform.
“i wanna give a shout out to my #highfidelity family. thank you for all the love and heart you put into this show. i’m in awe of all of you. and thank you to everyone who watched, loved and supported us,” wrote Kravitz wrote in her farewell address.
“I will miss you alllllllllllll so much,” Thompson commented.
“It’s cool,” Kravitz responded. “At least hulu has a ton of other shows starring women of color we can watch. oh wait.”
In the wake of massive Black Lives Matter protests across the nation, Hollywood celebrities have been increasingly demanding that the industry create more opportunities for black actors. Michael B. Jordan, who played Killmonger in Marvel’s “Black Panther,” called on Hollywood to “commit to black hiring,” demanding they invest in “black staff” and focus on black stories.
“I want us to invest in black staff,” said Jordan. “I’m proud to have an inclusion rider and all that good stuff and I use my power to demand diversity, but it’s time the studios and agencies — all the agencies, all these buildings that we’re standing in front of … do the same.”
“You committed to a 50/50 gender parity in 2020, where is the challenge to commit to black hiring?” Jordan added. “Black content led by black executives, black consultants. Are you policing our storytelling as well?”
Going forward, Jordan called on the industry to shine more light on the discrimination that black cultural leaders have faced.
“So let us bring our darkness to the light. Black culture. The sneakers, sports, comedic culture that you guys love so much — we’ve dealt with discrimination at every turn. Can you help fund black brands, companies, cultural leaders, black organizations?” Jordan continued. “A great agent doesn’t have to be a great organizer, but a great agent could advocate for relationships with organizers. Will you support a non-profit that’s working to solve problems of our industry, that our industry created?”
Rapper Ice Cube even went as far as to say that Hollywood owes black people reparations for its past participation in America’s racism.
“Virtually all the studios who contributed in our narrative, in our pain, in our misrepresentation, in stealing our history and giving it to white people for over a 100 years, so I think these studios that we know and love should kick in to a studio that’s ran by black people with no outside influences, and whose movies and projects are owned by those black people,” Ice Cube said on “The Breakfast Club.”
Ice Cube said that Hollywood should give more ownership to black directors and writers who put their own projects together.
“Those black artists, those black directors and writers, and people who put the projects together should own the projects – and these studios, they can license the projects, the movies, or the TV shows or whatever, or they don’t have to,” he said. “We can put them on our own streaming services. I just think it’s a form of reparations from the entertainment industry if they all had to invest a certain amount of money into the studio each year as payment for all the damage they’ve done to black people.”
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