Michael B. Jordan is calling on Hollywood to hire black talent.
Jordan, who grew up in Newark, addressed the industry at a protest supporting Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles Saturday.
“I want us to invest in black staff,” said Jordan, 33. “I’m proud to have an inclusion rider and all that good stuff and I use my power to demand diversity, but it’s time the studios and agencies — all the agencies, all these buildings that we’re standing in front of — to do the same."
In 2018, days after Frances McDormand mentioned the term in her Oscars acceptance speech, Jordan pledged that he would be using an inclusion rider — the practice of stipulating in contracts that a cast and crew be diverse — in all of the projects from Outlier Society, his production company. He urged Hollywood to follow suit.
“You committed to a 50/50 gender parity in 2020, where is the challenge to commit to black hiring?" Jordan said at the protest. "Black content led by black executives, black consultants, Are you policing our storytelling as well? So let us bring our darkness to the light. Black culture — the sneakers, sports, comedic culture that you guys love so much. We’ve dealt with discrimination at every turn. Can you help fund black brands, companies, cultural leaders, black organizations?”
Variety reports that “Big 4” Hollywood agencies — CAA, UTA, WME and ICM Partners — organized the protest outside the ICM building in Century City. The gathering joined an expanding series of protests against racial injustice and police brutality across the country following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many others.
“Will you support a nonprofit that’s working to solve problems that our industry created?" Jordan asked at the protest. “And we’ve got to vote ... voting has never been more important than it is today.”
“What we’re doing today will make our voices heard and thousands heard,” he continued. “We’ve got to keep doing it. We’ve got to keep agitating things. We can’t be complacent. We can’t let this moment just pass us by. We have to continue to put our foot on their necks ... I just want to be here, be present, and show you guys that I’m here with you."
Jordan played Oscar Grant in the 2013 Ryan Coogler movie “Fruitvale Station.” On New Year’s Day 2009, Grant, 22, was killed in Oakland, California after being shot in the back by Johannes Mehserle, an officer for the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police at the Fruitvale BART Station. It was of the first police brutality cases in which cellphone video played a major role.
Jordan also stars in “Just Mercy,” a movie that opened wide in January after Jordan attended a premiere in Newark. In light of the protests, Warner Bros. has made the film free for the month of June.
In the movie, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, Jordan plays civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, whose client, Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), is on death row in Alabama for a crime he did not commit. The film is based on Stevenson’s acclaimed 2014 memoir “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption." McMillian spent six years on death row before he was released in 1993.
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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Send a coronavirus tip here.
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