“When I was growing up, a film producer was a rich, fat man with his feet on the table and a cigar in his mouth,” says Rebecca O’Brien, an independent producer and long-time collaborator of director Ken Loach. “And now, you know, that’s me. Apart from rich and fat.”
“That’s me, apart from rich,” quips her friend, Suffragette producer Alison Owen, who worked on five Harvey Weinstein films, including Proof (2005) with Gwyneth Paltrow and, more recently, Tulip Fever. Last year Owen acknowledged her former colleague’s “sleazeball” reputation and spoke out in support of the women who came forward. She is now working towards legislation against harassment in the film and TV industry.
“Overall perceptions need to change,” O’Brien says. “I’ve been working for 30 years, yet when I tell someone I’m a film producer, they still say, ‘Ooh, documentaries?’ ‘No, feature films!’ Because you’re an ordinary, everyday-looking woman, it’s assumed you don’t have the power.”
Ramy El-Bergamy, Channel 4’s on-screen diversity executive, is nodding his head enthusiastically. “There are a lot of average men in this industry who seem to do very well. There aren’t an awful lot of average women – because to be a woman you have to be at the top of your game.”
“You have to be spectacular!” cries Owen in a mock theatrical tone and, as if on cue, she and O’Brien throw their feet up on the table in protest. Laughter erupts.
Sitting on scattered chairs in the bar of London’s Regent Street Cinema, O’Brien, Owen and El-Bergamy are joined by three others: Kate Kinninmont, CEO of Women in Film & Television UK, director Hope Dickson Leach, who co-founded Raising Films (a support network for parents in the industry) and actor Lysette Anthony (click on ‘i’ on bottom right of photo for caption). Some have never met face-to-face, yet most have been making connections since October, when the Harvey Weinstein allegations first broke. Along with the director Amma Asante and the actor Alice Evans, they are all – whether campaigning for reform or voicing their own personal experiences – working towards the same goal. “This has happened,” declares Kinninmont, whose organisation received more than 100 testimonies, ranging from systematic bullying to rape, in the wake of #MeToo. “And it’s horrific. So now what on earth are we going to do?”
“A lot of people don’t buy into white male privilege but I think that goes a long way to explaining the attitudes of some people in positions of power,” says El-Bergamy, when Kinninmont cites “laddish culture” as the crux of the problem. Anthony rolls her eyes, reflecting on Weinstein’s ascent in the industry. “When I first met Harvey,” she says, “his great dream was to make a musical with [coughs indiscreetly] Barry Manilow.”
Anthony was 19 when she was flown to the US to promote her role in sci-fi drama Krull (1983) and “summoned” to meetings with Weinstein. She felt she had no choice. “Your agent has the power to take your career away from you,” she explains. “If the king comes to town and you say, ‘I don’t want to meet the king,’ your career’s done.” Anthony stayed in touch with Weinstein for a number of years, unaware he would become threatening. She says that one morning in the late 80s, when she opened the front door to her London flat, he pushed his way in and raped her.
“I did the usual thing of going, it’s someone I knew, I’m not hurt, there wasn’t a knife. It was disgusting, but who was I meant to ring – my agent? What was I meant to say? Harvey Weinstein was the film industry, while I was ‘just’ another bloody actress. I knew I was utterly expendable. I would have been seen as an opportunist.”
But Anthony’s case is now starting to “move swiftly forward” in the hands of the Metropolitan police. Reflecting on Anthony’s experience, Kinninmont brings up the need to professionalise the industry: no more one-to-one interviews in bars or meetings in hotel rooms.
“Was it like being groomed?” she asks Anthony. “It was,” she replies, going on to praise Lime Pictures, which produces Hollyoaks, the television soap she’s now a regular in. “At Lime Pictures, our MDs are women and there is zero tolerance of bad behaviour, from lateness to sexual inappropriateness. It’s not complicated, it’s called respect, and respect includes equal pay.”
“People do believe that the gender pay gap can only be resolved by money coming away from men,” says Kinninmont, who disagrees. “It’s a myth that there is a piece of pie to be divided up,” says Dickson Leach, who directed the 2017 indie hit, The Levelling. “The creative industry is growing and the more diverse stories we tell, the more it’s going to grow. It’s this power-grabbing thing: ‘Don’t take away my job’ when it should be, ‘Your job could be even better – you could employ more people.’”
Asante, who directed the award-winning period drama Belle (2013), tells me change won’t be possible without power being shared. “Directors are deemed to be creative leaders on set and have an element of power. But I’ve been in a position in the past where somebody has behaved in a bigoted or misogynistic way and I’ve been able to fire them,” she explains. “But it took for me to go through the men who were my producers to do so. They listened and understood my concerns and did not disempower me in those situations, so we could solve the problem. That said, just because a set of execs decide to bring on a female director, it doesn’t mean they are capable of understanding the complexities of experiences women have on set.”
The three biggest box-office hits of 2017 (Wonder Woman, Beauty And The Beast and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) all featured female leads, but we’ve still got a long way to go when it comes to seeing more women on screen. “That’s why we need more women film directors as well,” points out O’Brien. Today, women account for just 11% of directors. “When you see films by Kathryn Bigelow or Andrea Arnold, you get a different way of looking at things, and we just don’t have enough of them.”
“An article I read said white men have had 99% of the pie for so long that the second you give them 95%, they completely lose their shit,” adds El-Bergamy. “And that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Evans (102 Dalmatians, Lost, The Vampire Diaries) was repeatedly trolled on Twitter when she revealed that turning down Weinstein’s advances had cost her work in Hollywood. Evans says she was asked to join him in a bathroom at the Cannes film festival in 2002; after turning him down, neither she nor her husband, Ioan Gruffudd, was considered for a Weinstein film again.
“I’ve heard that people have said, ‘She’s very difficult, don’t work with Alice’ and I’m like, ‘When did that happen?’ Harvey Weinstein was the king of all this,” she says. She was offered little support. “I’d call my manager and say, ‘Oh my God, this guy!’ And the response would be, ‘Deal with it, just get the job for God’s sake,’” Evans recalls, citing “the inside Hollywood warning system” as her main mode of survival. An actor might get a call, she says, telling them: “You’re about to do this show, the lead guy is going to hit on you and then he’ll probably pick on you if you don’t sleep with him.”
Anthony can empathise; she is now connected with Evans on a WhatsApp group with other women (including Lauren Sivan, the former Fox News reporter who broke the story about Weinstein masturbating into a plant pot). “On [BBC Radio 4’s] Moral Maze about a week after my story came out, Michael Portillo and Melanie Phillips were falling over themselves to say, ‘Career advancement. Career advancement!’” Anthony says.
“The general attitude of the public is still like that,” says Owen, who also happens to be Lily Allen’s mother. “My sister-in-law [film producer, Laura Madden] was one of the first women to come forward about Weinstein in the New York Times but was in hospital at the time and couldn’t give any interviews. Which is why I started speaking out.” Madden, a former employee of Weinstein, says he repeatedly asked her for massages in hotels in London and Dublin. “There were people on her ward gaily discussing how all these women were just doing it for publicity, not knowing they had one of them in their midst,” Owen continues. “Until we can release everybody from the male gaze, that’s going to happen.”
“I’ve found it very interesting how many men have been on the defensive,” adds O’Brien. “Those I would expect to be sympathetic and relatively feminist, saying, ‘[The accused] is not guilty until they’ve been taken to a court of law, you don’t know for sure, you’ve got to be careful.’”
“It all comes back to privilege,” says El-Bergamy. “If you’re a man and you don’t know the difference between flirting and being creepy, nine times out of 10, you’re probably being creepy.”
Owen nods. “I’ve had this discussion so much where a lot of men, particularly, have professed to be confused about what you’re allowed to do. If my daughter is working in a bar and another barman – her peer – says, ‘Your tits look great in that dress,’ it’s up to her to go, ‘Fuck off, you perv’ or ‘Do they?’” she says, mimicking pushing out her chest and smiling. “But if her boss says that to her, it’s not OK! What part of that is hard to understand?”
If the long-term solution is putting more women in positions of power, what do we do about educating those already in power to behave in an acceptable way? Dickson Leach, who conducted a survey to look at the barriers that continue to affect women in film and TV, says it’s not as simple as educating employers. “A massive problem is the fact that so many people are precarious labour, freelance. Plus this is an industry where we’re asked to spend a lot of time socialising, going to events, there’s alcohol, and dressing up…”
So what are the next steps? Workplace guidelines are being compiled by BFI’s head of diversity, Jennifer Smith, says Kinninmont. “Women in Film & Television are working with key organisations, drawing up a set of principles which every employer in the industry will accept.” She says there are also plans to put a proper complaints procedure in place. “Clearly there is a range of remedies, from informal discussion to legal action, and we aim to provide guidance on all of them.” The CTBF (Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund) is also planning to establish a bullying and harassment helpline for the industry.
Evans, meanwhile, has set up a group called WeSpoke which aims to help people who want to come forward, “initially about Harvey, but potentially on a wider scale, to encompass anyone who has been harassed or molested but who are shackled either by non-disclosure agreements – which should not be legal – or by fear of repercussions.”
Do we need a UK equivalent to Time’s Up, Hollywood’s initiative to fight harassment which includes a $13m legal defence fund for women in less privileged professions? “It’s already happening,” says Owen. “I’ve started working with the Women’s Equality party – we’re pooling resources with Jess Phillips and Caroline Criado Perez.
“A properly policed code of conduct will give people the confidence to come forward,” she continues. “I was talking to someone from the sexual offences unit at the Met last week, and ever since the Weinstein case, the CPS have taken on more cases, because they’re becoming more confident that they can get juries to believe women. I’ve got more hope than I’ve ever had that we’re going to make tangible change across our industry – and other industries as well.”
Judging by the mood in this room, there’s no danger of the momentum disappearing any time soon. “I’m very inspired right now by the generation below me, of women who are so connected, who are not going to take any shit and who are standing up for each other,” enthuses Dickson Leach.
“And I already feel a shift myself. After #MeToo I suddenly felt very different going into meetings. I thought, you know what, I’m not going to laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. I’m not doing this any more.”
• Commenting on this piece? If you would like your comment to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).
• This article was amended on 27 and 31 January 2018. An earlier version misquoted Amma Asante as saying she had not been able to fire people who had behaved inappropriately. This article was further amended to reflect the fact that Alice Evans was referring to calls from “the inside Hollywood warning system” in general, not from her own team.
