Frances McDormand just won her second Oscar as best actress, 21 years after her first for 'Fargo'. The actress portrayed a mother, Mildred, in 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri', a character who's so full of hate following the rape and murder of her daughter that she sets off to avenge her. McDormand's acceptance speech was among the most applauded of the night.
In an awards season centred around feminism, McDormand used her speech to highlight an important issue. The way she went about doing so however, was so powerful that it'll surely go down in recent Oscar history.
After thanking Martin McDonagh, 'Three Billboards...' director, her husband Joel Coen and her son, Pedro, the actress addressed the whole audience when she asked for all nominated women to stand alongside her. "Meryl (Streep) if you do it everybody else will, come on".
"Look around everybody, look around ladies and gentleman, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. Don't talk to us about it at the parties tonight, invite us into your office in a couple of days, or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best, and we'll tell you all about them. I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentleman, inclusion rider".
What are "inclusion riders"?
McDormand ended her speech with a reference to "inclusion riders". But what exactly does that mean? The actress elaborated during a back-stage press conference: "I just found out about this last week [inclusion riders]. This has always been available to all - everybody who does a negotiation on a film- which means you can ask for or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only the casting but the crew. The fact that I just learned that after 35 years in the film business - we aren't going back".
Whitney Cummings, creator of '2 Broke Girls', also explained the concept over Twitter as "something actors put into their contracts to ensure gender and racial equality in hiring on movie sets". Cummings added that this can only improve the quality of films. Essentially an "inclusion rider" is a demand that all stars are capable of putting in their contracts to ensure that the social movement we're seeing over Twitter and other networks actually makes the migration to the industry, creating a more diverse, representative and fair environment.
an inclusion rider is something actors put into their contracts to ensure gender and racial equality in hiring on movie sets. We should support this for a billion reasons, but if you can't find a reason to, here's one: it will make movies better.
? Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) March 5, 2018
