Taika Waititi, Eva Longoria and Niecy Nash-Betts Talk Leading the Diversity Charge at The Hollywood Reporter’s Raising Our Voices Luncheon

“As you can tell, there’s a writers strike on, so I didn’t write shit,” Taika Waititi joked upon grabbing the mic at The Hollywood Reporter’s second annual Raising Our Voices luncheon on Wednesday, teasing he initially had chatGPT take a first pass at his speech and it quickly pointed out Hollywood’s issues in diversity and representation. “Now if AI can do that in eight seconds and it gets it, what’s taking so long? This thing can tell me what the problem is and what we need to do to fix it in eight seconds, and there’s a lot of people in this town who still don’t get it and still kind of refuse to get it and want to be told.”

Waititi, who also appeared on this week’s THR cover, served as keynote speaker for the luncheon, where Eva Longoria and Niecy Nash-Betts were honored as 2023 Trailblazers. Amber Midthunder, Gloria Calderón Kellett and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power‘s Sophia Nomvete were among those who additionally took part in the day’s panel conversations. (See more photos.)

The event, sponsored by the Golden Globes, GenSpace and East West Bank, brought together the industry’s most influential and inspiring executives, storytellers and thought leaders to focus on the state and future of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in Hollywood, and coincided with the publication of THR’s Forces for Change Power List. 

Sharon Stone kicked off the luncheon, held at the Audrey Irmas Pavilion, telling the crowd, “I was invited to be your host for several reasons: because I’m loud, because I don’t take any crap and because I too am a person that has a diversity issue.”

“I had a stroke in 2001, I had a one percent chance of survival. I had a nine-day brain bleed. I recovered for seven years and I haven’t had jobs since,” she continued. “My contract changed, I have a maximum of a 14-hour day. When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody because, you know, if something goes wrong with you, you’re out. Something went wrong with me, I’ve been out for 20 years. I haven’t had jobs — I was a very big movie star at one point in my life.”

Speaking to the theme of the event, Stone noted, “Diversity can be more than one thing — diversity can be an injury, diversity can be the color of your skin, diversity can mean standing up for yourself. If you are diverse, you must demand a position in this business. We are here to raise our voices to demand for you. We demand that you be seen, we demand that you be heard; I would have loved to have been heard, but since I wasn’t, I decided to work so that you could be heard.”

Stone was followed by Annenberg Foundation executive director Cinny Kennard, after which THR editorial director Nekesa Mumbi Moody and THR co-publishers Beth Deutschman Rabishaw and Victoria Gold took the stage to offer welcome remarks.

Following the introduction was the first of two panel discussions, the “Inside Hollywood’s Shifting Power Structures” conversation with Entertainment 360 partner Eryn Brown, Funny or Die owner and chairman Henry R. Muñoz III, Franklin Entertainment CEO and president DeVon Franklin, Revelations CEO Lori McCreary, HFPA chief diversity officer Neil Phillips and moderator Latasha Gillespie, global head of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility for Amazon Studios, Prime Video, MGM and Freevee.

Gillespie asked Phillips about taking the job with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after the 2021 revelations that they had no Black members in their organization.

“I wanted to understand the spirit and the motivations of the organization’s leadership. When you think about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes, you think international, you think global, and to hear that this was an organization that had a diversity problem was ironic in many ways,” said Phillips. “It was very important to me to listen and hear and most importantly feel that the organization was committed to an effort that went far beyond weathering a storm. I wanted to get a very clear sense that this was an organization that was eager to transform into something far beyond getting out of trouble, something far beyond erasing negative headlines, I wanted to be a part of an organization that aspired to leadership and modeling in this area. And I believed that it had, and I’m now convinced that it has, the attributes and the commitment to do just that.”

He noted some of the HFPA’s changes in the last two years, including expanding its voting body to now represent 76 countries and have partnerships with groups like the NAACP, asking people “be just as vocal about progress that’s being made as we are when we see transgressions.” The conversation also touched on fighting for accessibility at Hollywood events and serving diverse audiences at the box office.

Longoria, who makes her directorial debut with the upcoming Flamin’ Hot, then received her Trailblazer Award, presented by the film’s stars Jesse Garcia and Annie Gonzalez.

Acknowledging trailblazers that came before her like Ava DuVernay, Patty Jenkins and Patricia Riggen, Longoria emphasized, “It shouldn’t be this hard, and sometimes I don’t like the word [‘trailblazer’] because I don’t understand why we can’t just use the other trails that have been there for so many other people. So the fact that we still have to do this to me is crazy because clearing this path is exhausting and I feel like we deserve a clear path. Why is the path clear for some but not all?”

“I personally want cleared paths to be paved with the stones of the successes of my sisters in this industry, so that the women that come behind us can just walk down this paved path,” she continued. “And so for anyone in this room in a position of power, please give us the space to focus less on the fight and more on the purpose.”

About midway through the luncheon, Calderón Kellett moderated “The State of Inclusion in Storytelling” conversation, joined by Amber Midthunder, Sophia Nomvete, The L Word: Generation Q actor Leo Sheng, Legendary producer Sydney Baloue and LaVant Consulting Inc. president and chief inclusion consultant Andraéa LaVant.

During the panel, Nomvete opened up about the racist backlash she received for her role on The Rings of Power as the first female dwarf of color in the Tolkien franchise.

“When the announcement came out and pictures went up about just our faces of who we were playing, I was statistically the most attacked cast member of the entire show,” she said. “There were N-bombs, I had no place here. ‘You’re too fat, you’re too black. Why are you here?’ I had one that was actually very polite, who said, ‘I’m sure that you’re a wonderful actress and a really lovely person. I just, I don’t think you should be part of this, it’s not right. If you could potentially just send a letter to Amazon with your resignation, I’d be very grateful.’” Nomvete joked, “I can’t afford to resign for you, so sadly I’m here to stay,” before adding, “I realized that my place in this show is not just a celebration, it is an act of defiance against a reality that is simply not true, which is that we have no place on screens or in fantasy spaces.”

The group also discussed the current attacks on LGBTQ+ people and the harmful tropes that come with portraying disabled people on screen. Midthunder also teased of the native representation in her hit film Prey, “It’s huge for our people, but also I think was a big moment for the studios to understand. We still are the most-watched thing on Hulu ever, including The Kardashians. I didn’t know if I was a big deal, and then they send that and I was like, ‘OK, this actually is important.’”

Afterwards, Nash-Betts was presented with her Trailblazer Award by her wife, Jessica Betts, who admitted, “I always get nervous and choked up when I’m talking about my best friend.”

The star started her speech by listing the things she’s done in Hollywood that others should not follow, including blaming co-star Whoopi Goldberg for messing up a scene while filming and not understanding when a casting director was asking her to leave the audition room during one of her first auditions.

“There are some things that I believe that I have done that may be worthy of following, like believing the call that the Most High has written on the canvas of your imagination for your life,” Nash-Betts said. “Like maybe when people tell you no, that just means ask another way. Walking fully in what it means to be a leading lady which is running your set with grace, dignity and decorum and so much love and light that people want to follow you. Most importantly, the one thing that I know you can follow is speaking the life you want into existence.”

Getting emotional, she continued, “I appreciate so much being accepted, being loved, not judged for who I love and how I love. The work that I did in Dahmer and The Rookie: Feds has nothing to do with where I lay my head, and it has everything to do with me opening doors for other people who are in a similar situation.” Nash-Betts also shouted out Quinta Brunson for showing up to the event to support her.

HFPA president Helen Hoehne then took the stage for a grant presentation to the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, a short film competition for filmmakers of all abilities that’s currently celebrating its 10th anniversary. Founder Nic Novicki was given a $20,000 grant from the HFPA, and two of the 2023 Easterseals filmmakers (Chrissy Marshall and Joci Scott) were also honored.

To finish out the event, producer and activist Bird Runningwater introduced Waititi, recalling when the two first met at Sundance in 2004 and started a friendship.

After making his AI jokes upon the start of his keynote speech, Waititi continued, “I think the word ‘diversity’ is wrong. I think that the idea of diversification of the screen is not quite right, because it’s actually confusing everyone and what’s happening is we’re mistaking that for, ‘We have to include a person from every single race and every single background and every single part of the human experience in every show or everything that we make.’ That’s not reality. And it’s not authentic,” noting that he never grew up with a group of friends comprised of people from every racial background. “I don’t want to see one token Polynesian character in your show. … What I want to see is a fully Polynesian-controlled, Polynesian story that’s written by and showrun by — showrun by, OK, when we make our things, don’t have a white showrunner to tell us the rules and tell us how to do things. Let us figure it out and let us figure out the structure of the story in our own way from our own experience.”

The star also noted that he’s “happy, I’m good, if I see someone who’s not white on the screen. If I watch Beef I’m like, I’m good, that’s enough for me. I love that show, I’m seeing myself in these people. I see Atlanta, I see myself; I see Res Dogs, I’m seeing myself. I know these people have the same experience as minorities, as people who have been fighting and having to raise our voices for hundreds of years,” adding, “As long as it’s not colonial representation and the people who’ve had power for too long, that’s good enough for me.”

Waititi finished his speech with a call to stop asking people of color and those from underrepresented backgrounds to answer for the diversity issue. “Stop asking us what to do, how to fix things, alright? I’m so tired of this, the diversity, inclusivity conversation, all the conversations,” he said, adding, “It’s not gonna happen in two years, it’s not gonna happen in four years. It’s a long journey. So we’ll stumble, we should stumble together — you guys do most of the stumbling. We will get there but just don’t expect it to be fixed just like that.”

As the event wrapped up, Stone jumped back on stage with one more message for the women in the audience, asking women to write something amid the strike’s work stoppage. “I never played a part written by a woman, and that’s why I’ve played so many drunks and crazy people and killers because I had to explain why they were written the way they were. So ladies, if you’re not in the writers guild, why don’t you write something?” to laughs and applause from the crowd.