“Muslims are 25% of the population, but only 1% of characters in popular TV series”, Malala calls out Hollywood
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai attended Variety’s 2022 Power of Women event presented by Lifetime and called out Hollywood by highlighting the fact that Muslim actors only make up 1% of popular television series leads.
Yousafzai received her Variety honour from “Abbott Elementary” creator Quinta Brunson, who called her as one of “the most influential advocates of our time.” Yousafzai just unveiled the initial lineup of projects coming from her production company Extracurricular. She is still the youngest Nobel Laureate in history. Yousafzai and her head of production Erika Kennair are in charge of the organisation, which last year signed a multi-year programming agreement with Apple TV+.
The vast diversity of Yousafzai’s first works underlines her determination to showcase representative tales that haven’t always found a home in Hollywood.
While talking about the representation of Muslim characters in lead roles Malala said, “I learned that Asian people like me make up less than 4% of leads in Hollywood films. Muslims are 25% of the population, but only 1% of characters in popular TV series”.
Yousafzai is also lending her support to Riz Ahmed’s Pillars Artist Fellowship, which provides financial assistance to aspiring Muslim filmmakers and screenwriters. The programme is timely because during her lecture, Yousafzai presented fresh information from a recent USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
“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,” she remarked. “Sometimes it feels like they’re saying we just don’t belong here”.
At a Variety event, Yousafzai spoke about the pivotal incident at the age of 11 that led her to become an activist and strive for the inclusion of creative viewpoints from underrepresented and diverse backgrounds in the entertainment business.
