How The Inevitable Foundation Is Fighting For Disability Inclusion In Hollywood

deadline.com:

The Inevitable Foundation is calling for Hollywood to be more inclusive of disabled creatives, a community that is often looked over for jobs and omitted from conversations and studies about diversity.

Disabled people make up over 20 percent of the population but count on less than 1 percent of representation in film and TV.Founded in 2021 by Richie Siegel and Marisa Torelli-Pedevska, the non-profit organization was originally launched with the purpose of supporting mid-career disabled writers.

But as they began speaking to groups involved in the diversity and equity inclusion space and Hollywood executives, they were faced with challenges.“We have this dual mission when we started: it was about funding and mentoring mid-career disabled writers and increasing the number of characters on screen.

That second part turned out to be really problematic because we would talk to execs and other people and they say, ‘Oh, great, I’ll call you when the disabled roles come up.’ No one ever called us, Siegel shared at Starz’s inaugural #TakeTheLead Summit on Thursday evening in Los Angeles.He continued, “And we started to realize that by focusing on-screen and off-screen, it was starting to pigeonhole the writers we care so deeply about, so we dropped the onscreen mission and focused instead on the workforce— no one has ever raised that objection again…They are great writers.