Thursday, March 28, 2024

Hollywood’s Black Talent Agents Face Uphill Battles

*Movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther are rare and don’t always happen because of how the projects were put together.

Most of the time, the people who are brokering these movies’ deals are in control of who walks through the door and what stories are narrated to the audiences. Would it come as a surprise that most of the time these powerful individuals are white?

Of the seas of television and film representatives at the 4 Hollywood powerhouses – William Morris Endeavor, United Talent Agency, ICM Partners and Creative Artists Agency – only a handful are black if at all.

Let’s have a look at what some real black agents with experiences with major agencies have to say about the industry:

Andrea Nelson Meigs

She has been an agent since 2000 and her clients include celebrities like J. Cole and Beyonce Knowles. Andrea believes that very few people know what an agent really is because most celebrities have uncles and aunts as their managers. This is why most black people don’t know how to get into the industry and how to stay there. Even Andrea herself says that she wasn’t making enough money as a successful agent to live in L.A.

Lorrie Bartlett - gettyimages-85924006-2048x2048
Lorrie Bartlett (Getty)

Lorrie Bartlett

Lorrie is an agent since 2014 and her clients include Lucy Liu, Regina King and Michael Keaton. She expressed, very emotionally, that she had no beacon to follow herself. She had no parents that could help her into the industry. The only advantage she experienced was that she got to live in her own home for a little longer- which is also when she worked long hours for the same amount of results as her White colleagues. If they took 10 steps, Lorrie had to take 15 just to prove herself.

Ashley Holland

Ashley has been working as an agent since 2013 and her most noteworthy clients include Janelle Monáe, Halle Berry. She believes that it isn’t like black people aren’t get recruited right out of their universities. It’s just that those who get recruited are exceptionally high achievers and hence some even end up in Fortune 500 companies. Hollywood agencies, however, are quite different. People only get into the industry because they got hired by their family or friends and that’s exactly how she got in as well!

As you can see, until there is going to an infrastructural shift in these talent agencies in terms of diversity and inclusion, things aren’t looking for black talent agents.

 

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