Hollywood Reporter called out for lack of diversity on leading actress panel: 'Can you make a little more room at the table?!'

The Hollywood Reporter is being criticized — again — for its lack of diversity on its cover of female Academy Award contenders.

The cover features six very talented leading ladies — Glenn Close, Lady Gaga, Kathryn Hahn, Nicole Kidman, Regina King and Rachel Weisz, who all participate in a roundtable discussion in the issue — with just one woman of color among them. Almost as soon as the publication posted the story on Twitter, the criticism flowed in. A similar sentiment was expressed by many people, and that was: “Can you make a little more room at the table?!”

Leading ladies (from left) Glenn Close, Kathryn Hahn, Regina King, Rachel Weisz, Lady Gaga and Nicole Kidman are the Oscar contenders featured on the cover (Photo: <em>Hollywood Reporter</em> via Twitter)
Leading ladies (from left) Glenn Close, Kathryn Hahn, Regina King, Rachel Weisz, Lady Gaga and Nicole Kidman are the Oscar contenders featured on the cover (Photo: Hollywood Reporter via Twitter)

Here were some of the posts calling out the magazine:

Many posted Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo’s recent comment about the lack of diversity in Hollywood and how it needs to be demanded, especially by white actors.

Many other names were offered up as suggestions — Viola Davis for Widows, Constance Wu for Crazy Rich Asians — and some others are Yalitza Aparicio for Roma, KiKi Layne for If Beale Street Could Talk, Tessa Thompson for Sorry to Bother You and Creed II, and Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina for Crazy Rich Asians.

THR hasn’t yet responded to Yahoo’s request for comment about the criticism, but this is not the first time this has been an issue with the publication. In 2015, there were no women of color featured, and it also made headlines. At that time, Stephen Galloway, THR’s executive editor of features, wrote an essay to explain the process of how the actresses get picked. While he called it “appalling” that “every one of these women is white — whether old or young, English, Australian or American” and admitted that the magazine did “deserve some blame,” he said most of the blame falls on the Hollywood studios that create and cast the movies. “Speak to the executives that run the industry, and they say they want change,” he wrote. “But there are hardly any black film executives, and too few producers. Black directors? Not enough — and certainly not black women directors. … If there were far more minority men and women to choose from, this sort of hand-wringing would never exist. And it’s about time it changed.”

Funnily enough — in the new roundtable, the six cover subjects talk about “how Hollywood is different now” but not when it comes to diversity. The discussion centers around how the #MeToo movement has changed the industry in the past year.

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