Posted in: Current News, Editor's Picks TV News, Movies, TV | Tagged: directing, directors, Female Forward, gender equality, gender parity, Jennifer Salke, Lesli Linka Glatter, nbc, tca, TCA's, television, tv

NBC Announces 'Female Forward' Initiative To Foster Female Directors

Heeding the call for gender parity on both sides of the camera and coming only a day after CBS found itself in social media hot water with actress Jessica Chastain over their lack of lead female characters on their new fall programming slate, NBC has announced that it is moving forward with a new professional mentorship program entitled Female Forward, which will emphasize the importance of giving female directors more directing opportunities among scripted series across all of the network's platforms. With NBC President Jennifer Salke and director Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland, Ray Donovan, The Newsroom) at the helm, this initiative will give ten female directors the opportunity to "shadow" up to three episodes of an NBC series; and also receive a commitment to direct at least one episode of that series at the end of the program.

In a released statement, Salke knows it's about both recognizing a serious issue now and looking to make a positive impact on the future:

"It's been a collective and urgent goal of ours to identify more female directors. We strongly believe women can and should be at the forefront of telling compelling stories, and I hope the guaranteed directing component will have real impact on our shows as well as the industry."

For Linka Glatter, it's about changing a playing field that's been too uneven for way too long:

"It shouldn't be harder for our daughters to direct than for our sons. It should be an equal playing field. A program like this is a game changer and it's an honor to be a part of it."

Female Forward is set to begin with the 2018-2019 television season, with NBC hopeful that the program will also help boost the ranks of the network's overall talent pool moving forward. While the initiative is beginning with ten NBC shows, more shows and directors are expected to come on-board in subsequent years.

And though she did not mention the CBS/Chastain issue directly, Salke wanted to stress that she expects to see more than one female directing a pilot that the network picks-up for Fall 2018 even though Female Forward applies only to current NBC shows:

"There's a huge drought of female directors and females across the board in our business. And we were really determined, after this pilot season and after staffing directors for the first season, to finally do something really actionable about that. I would be really disappointed if I didn't have more than one woman directing a pilot this season. I feel like we have to at least have a good percentage of the pilot directors being female. I'll get out early to make that happen, I'll attach someone early, I'll give somebody a shot, there is no way I'm going to find myself in the same position where no females were directing our pilots."

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