Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company to add ‘inclusion riders’
Actress Frances McDormand brought attention to inclusion riders at the Academy Awards earlier this month.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, Pearl Street Films, is making diversity a priority.
Fanshen Cox DiGiovani, the head of strategic outreach for the company, announced on Twitter Monday that Pearl Street will be adopting an “inclusion rider” for all future projects.
https://twitter.com/fanshen/status/973374277792739328
An inclusion rider is the idea that people who have negotiating power in the film industry, such as A-list actors, directors, and producers, insist on language in their contracts demanding diversity in both on-screen and behind-the-camera positions.
Actress Frances McDormand brought attention to inclusion riders when, earlier this month, she concluded her Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech with, “I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.”
Last week, actor Michael B. Jordan (“Creed,” “Black Panther”) said he would adopt an inclusion rider for all projects produced by his production company.
Damon has previously faced criticism for comments he made about diversity in filmmaking. During a 2015 segment of the show “Project Greenlight,” the Cambridge native rebuffed the suggestion of producer Effie Brown (“Dear White People”) to hire a white woman and a Vietnamese-American man to co-direct a “Greenlight”-backed film featuring a minority character who is a prostitute.
In the segment, Damon said that diversity should be handled in “the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show.”
“Wow, OK,” Brown responded.
In a New York Times interview, Damon said the quote was taken out of context.
“The idea that I would say that there didn’t need to be diversity behind the camera, it’s not only complete anathema to what I believe in my heart and always have,” Damon said, “but it’s not something that I think anybody would ever say with a camera on.”
