Hollywood diversifies as stars adopt 'inclusion riders' after Oscars speech

Hollywood's next crop of movies and TV shows will be more diverse because actors have begun to demand equal pay and opportunities, industry insiders say.

Actors have taken to ensuring their latest ventures do a better job of representing society with an "inclusion rider" clause, which insists on diverse hires as a condition of their participation.

The idea has already been taken up by prominent actors - Frances McDormand, the Oscars best actress winner, caused the phrase to trend on Twitter when she ended her acceptance speech with it.

This week Michael B Jordan, star of Hollywood's latest blockbuster film Black Panther, announced his production company Outlier Society would be adopting the initiative.

In a statement, Jordan said: “I’ve been privileged to work with powerful women and persons of colour throughout my career and it’s Outlier’s mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward."

The term "inclusion rider" was developed by Stacy Smith, from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, who spoke about the concept in a TED talk in 2016.

The initiative is already spreading further afield - with talent agencies reporting the biggest change they have seen in years.

Ms Smith said she was thrilled to hear McDormand’s rallying cry for the term, telling US media “the message of the industry is going out strong and clear".

While some have criticised the idea as a quota system, its proponents believe it will bring about a real change of picture on our screens and will eventually revolutionise the casting process.

Arron Lloyd, who has acted in US drama series Blue Bloods, said he believed Black Panther's success has led to networks "understanding the value of actors of colour".

"I think there is more pressure for transparency and equal pay [in the industry]," he said.

"[Jessica] Chastain just helped Octavia Spencer with that - with allies like that coming to the table things can start to shift".

Earlier this year Spencer, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for 2011's The Help, said Chastain had helped her increase her salary by five times by tying the two stars' contracts together.

Karen Riposo, president of KPA multi-ethnic talent management, believes the change is already taking hold.

"Now with inclusion riders that's going to increase our opportunities," she said.

"I've been doing this for 18 years and there really has not been a lot of opportunities [until now].

"This pilot season [when new shows are cast] there has been a huge turn around in the opportunities, it has definitely increased immensely."

She added that viewers can expect to see more diversity in the next series of TV shows, revealing that a slew of "female-dominated pilots just came out... and they all say 'diverse choice' - meaning submit your artist of colour".

"Back in the day there was one Latino opportunity per month; now every day there are several opportunities for Latinos, African Americans, Indians.

"There are so many people saying there's no change in the era of Trump. No, I can say I witnessed this every day - there's change, we're finally making some money.

"Everybody is on the movement right now."

Annette  E. Alvarez, a talent manager working solely with minority actors in New York, is more cautiously optimistic. "When you're at Jordan's level - an actor of colour in the blockbuster of all blockbusters - you can say anything you want," she said.

"All this is great, but at the end of the day it's the diverse actors at the lower levels who will still get the short end of the stick. Our company is at a point where we have chosen to not submit actors for certain TV shows. Why? The roles asking for ethnic submissions 'specifically' are one liners."

But Ms Alvarez insists she is "optimistic for the future", having witnessed a cultural shift in the two decades since she began her management company.  "When we started out in 1994 my actors went to shows like the Sopranos and Law and Order, which wanted characters with accents to fill roles like Chinese smugglers and Romanian slaves."

With the Netflix generation, Ms Alvarez sees the new media landscape becoming more diverse. "The millennial generation want to see people like themselves," she said.