Geena Davis

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:44)
It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorn. We're sharing with you a few of our favorite Bullseye interviews ever. Next up is Geena Davis. When Geena Davis starred in Thelma and Louise, it looked like her breakthrough. I mean, Oscar nominations, huge box office had to be the start of a trend, right? Women could star in buddy movies. But it didn't actually work out that way. Same thing happened when she starred in A League of Their Own, Acclaim, Box Office, Smash, but no more women's sports movies. So when her first daughter was a young kid, Davis started wondering how many women were in the kids shows that she was watching. She decided to start The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to find out. The results of that first study were discouraging, and so were the results of the second, and that institute has been studying sexism in entertainment for 22 years.
When Geena Davis and I talked in 2016, the institute had found representation increasing in film and TV. But if you've been paying attention to the news lately, you know that the call for inclusion has gotten stronger, but so has resistance. Anyway, my interview from 2016 with the great Geena Davis.
Geena Davis, great to have you on the show. Welcome to Bullseye.

**Geena Davis** (2:05)
Thank you so much.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:07)
So, well, let's start by talking about the institute, and we'll get into your career later. But you're clearly a person who goes into things whole hog, as evidenced by the fact that you once almost became an Olympic archer.
But, and we're definitely going to talk about that.

**Geena Davis** (2:27)
Okay.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:28)
But what led you into this work in such broad and deep way?

**Geena Davis** (2:35)
Well, it is a tendency of mine to go too far with everything, but I didn't intend to with this in the beginning, after I noticed how bereft of female presence kids entertainment seemed to be, I just started asking people about it. I asked my friends if they noticed that the movie that just came out had only one female character in it after the mother dies gruesomely, of course, in the first five minutes, and none of them noticed. So I thought, well, I'm in the industry, I meet a bunch of people, I'll just ask people about it and see what the thinking is and so if I had a meeting with a studio executive or producer, director, whatever, I'd say, have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in G and PG rated movies? Every single person I asked said, no, that's not true anymore, that's not a problem anymore.
They were very sincere about it and actually passionate about it. They weren't saying, it's not a big deal. They said, we care about that here, we work on it, we talk about it all the time, and we made, and they would name a movie with one female character as proof that gender inequality had been fixed. So this was very striking to me, that the people creating this stuff had no idea how few female characters there were. So that's what made me think, maybe if I had the numbers, it would make a difference and that started the whole thing.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:05)
I mean, it is something that I think, you know, because of a combination of a sexist society and my own male privilege. It's easy for me not to think of, but if I think of Toy Story is a beautiful, fantastic movie.

**Geena Davis** (4:21)
Absolutely.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:22)
Like a real genuine four-star movie, but like it's like Bo Peep.

**Geena Davis** (4:28)
Keep going.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:36)
Like they added one or two more. There's Barbie.
I don't think they added her till later. But anyway, it is kind of a terrifying thing. Was it something that you had thought about in your own work prior to having that realization about the stuff your daughter was watching?

**Geena Davis** (4:51)
Well, I was certainly aware that there were fewer really great parts for women. But I think anybody, if you ask them, are there fewer starring roles for women? I think your average moviegoer would say, well, yeah, it seems so.
But certainly in the earlier days, I was getting a lot of really great parts, and my whole impression was things are getting better. Then, like you said, that thing happened with Thelma and Louise in League of Their Own, and I thought, yeah, now everything's getting fixed, and it's all good. It took me quite a while to realize that things weren't getting better. Because part of it is, you expect things to get better, but part of it is the press kept saying, now things are better. When there was a movie that struck it big starring women like, I remember when First Wives Club came out, oh, this fixes everything. Now, 50-year-old women can lead movies and whatever. You buy it.