Malala Yousafzai, a US woman’s celebration speaker, addressed the issue of Hollywood films not featuring Muslims.
The Nobel Peace Prize Winner at 25 claimed, during her speech at Variety’s Power of Women event, that Muslim actors make up only one percent of all famous television series lead.
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“I learned that Asian people like me make up less than four per cent of leads in Hollywood films. Muslims are 25 per cent of the population, but only one per cent of characters in popular TV series,” she said.
Adding that “sometimes it feels like they’re saying we just don’t belong here,” Yousafzai mentioned, “I know that the executives have passed on dozens of quality, equally amazing projects because they thought that the characters or their creators were too young, too Brown, too foreign, too poor.”
Malala Yousafzai talks about the lack of representation in film. “I learned that Asians like myself make up less than 4 percent of Hollywood leads,” she said. Muslims are 25% of the country, but only 1% make up the characters on popular TV series.” Variety| Variety #PowerOfWomenPresented by @lifetimetv pic.twitter.com/WBmgjOl0Ep
— Variety (@Variety) September 29, 2022
Yousafzai is a filmmaker producer who has worked on three Apple projects.
Extracurricular, Yousafzai’s production company, teamed up with A24 independent studio to create an untitled feature documentary about “haenyeo”, a society of South Korean fisherwomen who live on South Korea’s Jeju Island.
The second is a scripted TV series that was based on the coming of age novel. Fifty Words About RainAsha Lemmie directed the film, which tells the story of a woman’s struggle to accept herself in post-World War II Japan. This is the third project, a feature film. Don’t look up Based on Elaine Hsieh Chou’s book, Adam McKay, filmmaker, and Hyperobject production firm, Hyperobject Disorientation.
Regarding these projects, Yousafzai stated to Variety that she’s hoping “to bring to the table are the voices of women of colour, and debut writers and Muslim directors and writers.
“I also hope that the content is entertaining and that people fall in love with the characters and have the best time together,” she added.
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