Jacob Savage

improving now because I don't think they ever, cause Holly, they never believed in anything.

You know, I think academia is the one that is like lost forever, but, um, so before we get into academia, let me just stay in Hollywood for a second.

I think there are a few people who believed, but I don't think sort of the senior executives ever believed that this was good.

I don't think that the most showrunners really thought, you know, I really just don't want to hire the best person for this job.

I think a lot of people were.

were frustrated.

And I think they've pivoted.

Again, I spoke to the showrunner recently who was basically like, we're back to 2012 rules, which is, don't embarrass us with an all white male writer's room, but other than that, you can hire whoever you want.

So it ends up- So it is going back.

Yeah, they're I mean, they're not like going back to sort of we don't care at all, but they're going back to, you know, I think we can all acknowledge we went too far with this and we just want, you know, to make some money again.

I think both.

I think some of them really were believers and the hypocrisy of fully pulling up the ladder behind you is something both interesting and it could be a case study in its own indie movie.

I think a lot of them felt very direct pressure.

And I think what was interesting about this whole moment is the pressure came both from the bottom and from the top, where from the bottom, you know, you don't want to get, you know, have some sort of Twitter thread in 2020 go viral about how racist you are because, you know, you're still only having, you know, white men in your writer's room.

At the same time, there were literal mandates from the companies where, you know,

Unless you were maybe the most powerful writer in Hollywood, I'm not even... You, as a showrunner, had to have a room that was 50% diverse.

And if you're trying to hire senior writers and the pool for them, you know, is still primarily white men.

So you hire a couple senior writers and you're left with, you have to, everyone else who you hire has to not be a white man.

So I think some of them were believers and I think some of them, you know, people do what they have to do to, you know, make a living and get along.

And I don't think it was possible in a lot of these contexts for them to even say no.