News, Television, Women Directors

Ryan Murphy’s Push to Hire More Female Directors is a Huge Success

Ryan Murphy: Gage Skidmore/Wiki Commons

Ryan Murphy has put his words into action. Months after launching Half, a foundation within his 20th Century Fox-based production company aiming to diversify Hollywood, results are actually in.

As we previously reported, Murphy committed to having 50 percent of all director gigs on his shows, which include “Scream Queens,” “American Crime Story,” and “American Horror Story,” go to either women or minority candidates, which he defines as people of color or members of the LGBTQ community. His self-imposed deadline to achieve this goal was the end of 2016.

As THR reports, he’s surpassed that goal. “Murphy has more than delivered on his promise, with 60 percent of his directing gigs going to women, dwarfing the industry standard: a paltry 17 percent.”

His initiative even spread into the hiring of on-set crew members.

“I sat down with every department head on every show that I make and said, ‘You need to hire 50 percent women when you can,’” Murphy said. “If you don’t have them, like the grip department, train them.”

Murphy’s female director initiative encouraged some of his staple actresses to take jobs behind the camera.

“The discovery, for me, is that I’m a director and have been my whole life,” said Jamie Lee Curtis who appears on and has directed for “Scream Queens.” “I have a movie in development at Paramount, at Amazon, and I will now say, ‘Why don’t I direct it?’ instead of ‘Who are we going to have direct it?’”

“American Horror Story” actress and director Angela Bassett added, “I’m still an actor for hire, but now it’s about taking meetings to let people know I’m just as excited about directing.”

And Murphy’s push is also helping emerging female directors get more exposure.

“I thought I would have been able to move into TV much sooner,” said indie feature director Maggie Kiley, a Half participant whose first TV job was a “Scream Queens episode. “I’d shadowed other directors on series — but nothing. This program is so unique because there’s Ryan, willing to hand you an episode because he believes in you.”

With such amazing advancement in so few months, Murphy has proven that change can happen if you actually take steps towards achieving it. Elsewhere in the TV universe, other series are taking great steps as well. Each episode of Ava DuVernay’s OWN drama “Queen Sugar was directed by a woman, and the system will continue into Season 2. And “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” executive producer and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg has revealed that Season 2 of the hit Netflix series starring Krysten Ritter will be helmed entirely by women directors.


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