The 2017 Women in TV Power List
This article originally appeared in the February 2017 issue of ELLE.
BONNIE HAMMER | CHAIRMAN, NBC UNIVERSAL CABLE ENTERTAINMENT
Widely known as the most powerful woman in TV, Hammer oversees nine networks, including Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy, Esquire, and USA (thank her for Mr. Robot), all of which command a whopping audience averaging 113.5 million viewers a week. She's also in command of two production studios, and 10 of the 16 senior execs reporting to her are women. A vocal advocate against ageism in Hollywood, Hammer is relaunching NBCUni's public-service campaign, Erase the Hate, which she introduced in the '90s to combat racism, sexism, and the many forms of intolerance that were then-and now-pervasive in our culture. Leveling the playing field: "The first thing is being a role model, being proud of being a woman, and not trying to emulate someone else.Just being authentic gives a nod to other women to play to their strengths." A little advice: "Sometimes being the quietest one in the room but having the one unbelievably smart summary sentence makes people turn their heads a lot more than being the one screaming from the sidelines."
SAMANTHA BEE | STAR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE (TBS)
With the fastest-growing audience in late night, Bee-the only former female anchor
from The Daily Show to get her own show-has a mission to expose sexism wherever she finds it (and she finds it a lot), combining outrage with a laugh-out-loud sense of the absurd. She's reported on sexual crimes in the workplace and the restrictions on abortion clinics. She's also staffed her show by taking blind submissions from writers. The result: a producing team that is a coalition of multiracial, varied-sexuality, and varied-gendered people. Why a diverse team matters: "It's not just about hiring women. Where's the fun if your staff is all upper-middle-class white women living in gated communities? You also have to hire women who are not carbon copies of you, who see the world differently." Up next for Full Frontal: More of that truth-to-power approach: "It's not like we thought all our problems would be solved having Hillary in the White House, but I feel like we're looking down the barrel of something really alien. There will be a lot of shock."
AVA DUVERNAY | DIRECTOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, QUEEN SUGAR
DuVernay (Selma and the upcoming A Wrinkle in Time) has proved herself a revolutionary once again with Queen Sugar. She and fellow EP Oprah Winfrey put every episode of OWN's hit drama series-which stars Dawn-Lyen Gardner as the wife of a disgraced NBA player who returns to Louisiana to help her family run their sugarcane farm-in the hands of a female director (and DuVernay handled the first two herself). Why women only: "For the same reason the showrunners of Game of Thrones decided to hire all male directors for their last two seasons," DuVernay says. "Because they could and they wanted to. I wanted to hire all incredible women. And I could. So I did." The big difference: "The female perspective powerfully impacts everything we see onscreen," Gardner says. "It challenges the norms about 'who gets to' in our industry." The Queen Sugar effect: More series are following suit. Netflix's Jessica Jones will have all female directors for season two, and four out of the five directors who'll helm the 10 episodes of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale are women.
DANA WALDEN | CHAIRMAN AND CEO, FOX TELEVISION GROUP
Her empire includes the Fox megahit Empire as well as Lee Daniels's midseason project, Star, all of which have helped win the network an audience that is diverse and 50 percent female. Further, as head of the 20th Century Fox Television production studio, Walden fosters cross-network hits like NBC's This Is Us. But here's why we really love her: "There are executive vice presidents in this company who started out as my assistants," Walden says, "and that was by design, to bring women in and put them on a path to leadership." On playing the long game: "I'm proud of the relationships we've built with strong women behind the camera. Showrunners like Ilene Chaiken, who runs Empire, and Liz Meriwether, who runs and created New Girl. Lesli Linka Glatter, an executive producer and director of Homeland. Pam Williams and Effie Brown, executive producers on Star. These are talented forces we'll be in business with for a long time." Next steps: "We're in partnership with Ryan Murphy's Half, where his goal is to assign 50 percent of all director slots to women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community."
SHONDA RHIMES AND KERRY WASHINGTON | FOUNDER AND CEO, SHONDALAND; ACTRESS, SCANDAL
Rhimes has given us fierce, smart, all-too-human heroines for more than a decade-from the Grey's Anatomy docs to Scandal's fixer Olivia Pope (Washington) to Viola Davis, teaching us How to Get Away With Murder-and uses TV to shine a light on some of the more contentious issues confronting women today. On Scandal's last midseason finale, not only did Olivia get an abortion, but Senator Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) filibustered against a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, Kerry Washington-fresh off her home run as Anita Hill in HBO's Confirmation-is following Rhimes's socially conscious footsteps by generating work for women with her own production company, Simpson Street. On the docket: a drama about female police officers in L.A., and a sitcom about a multicultural family.
CHANNING DUNGEY | PRESIDENT, ABC ENTERTAINMENT
Last year Dungey ascended to one of TV's top jobs, becoming the first African American to run a major network. Now she's in charge of all of ABC's prime-time and late-night shows (even Shonda is a direct report!). On her agenda: "Male showrunners still outnumber female showrunners by a large margin-we don't have enough women, especially women of color, in those positions. I'm doing everything I can to change those stats." Mentoring essentials: "Sometimes women are afraid to be ambitious, as though there's something bad about wanting the big job. I support causes like Step Up-I was a founding member and still serve on the board of the L.A. chapter-and Girls Inc., both of which empower girls to reach for education and careers."
JILL SOLOWAY | CREATOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, TRANSPARENT; I LOVE DICK
Besides being the only person in history to chant "Topple the patriarchy!" in an Emmy acceptance speech (for best director of a comedy series, Transparent), Soloway-who wrote for Six Feet Under before executive-producing United States of Tara-has put Amazon's streaming service on the map; persistently creates believable, unconventional, unique TV women; and is a preeminent voice in the trans civil rights movement. Fun but relevant fact: Her production company is called Topple.
KATE MCKINNON | ACTRESS, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE
McKinnon's hilarious and unlikely SNL characters-from a Russian peasant to Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Angela Merkel-pop off the screen with real heart as well as the zing of satire. Her affecting performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," performed in character as Hillary Clinton days after the election, got audiences weeping together-and brought SNL season-high ratings as well as 22 million views online. On the inspiration of comedy: "I'd like to think that by playing mostly women in business suits or dumpy clothes or lab coats or weird outfits, I'm subconsciously promoting the idea that women have value beyond being objects of beauty and delight." On challenging industry clichés: "A lot of male-protagonist journeys involve trying to start a business, heal a friendship, find one's place in the world. A woman typically ends in some sort of romantic partnership. I like to play women who are trying to succeed, trying to become the fullest version of themselves."
You Might Also Like
