The movie at the time?
Davis in the TV show ‘Commander in Chief’ (2005).
Reporters came to the set to interview us, and I noticed immediately that they all asked at some point, ‘Do you think this is a feminist movie?’ Sort of conspiratorial, like, ‘I’m not really saying this out loud’ sort of a thing and like, ‘Wouldn’t it be weird if you actually said yes?’
And I would say yes. And they would say, ‘What, you do? Can I say that you said that?’ And I was like, yes, you can. I mean, what’s your definition of feminist? Feminist means believing in equal rights and opportunities, and this is about women playing baseball. So it’s about women can play too.
But they were horrified; it was like I had said something horrifying and they generously wanted to be sure I wanted to allow them to print that I had said that.
Are things much better now?
No, although I don’t think they’d whisper the question. But as far as the perception of it when it came out, I noticed there was so much prognosticating that this would change everything.
Now that there’s been a tremendous hit, a very successful movie starring women, there were going to be so many female sports movies. And I particularly noticed that because when I had done Thelma and Louise, which came out a year earlier, it was the same thing, the press was saying, this changes everything. There are going to be so many female road pictures, female buddy pictures, just more movies starring women because it struck such a nerve.
And neither prediction proved to be true whatsoever.
Was the movie pivotal for you personally?
It was huge. It was very pivotal to my life in multiple ways. One was experiencing the reaction of young girls to the movie and so many girls and young women saying, ‘I took up sports because of that movie.’ I still have the same number of girls and women telling me they play sports because of that movie now as I did then. It’s like a rite of passage to see this movie. It’s got remarkable longevity.
Also, just on a personal level, I had never really played any sports, and I definitely couldn’t play baseball when I got cast. And so I trained really hard, and it was the first time that I was told that I had untapped athletic ability, In the TV show ‘The Exorcist’. which was an incredible compliment in my book, and so I felt like I really did, and it changed everything about my self-esteem and my self-confidence. I’d always been a little self-conscious about my height. It was hard when I was in high school and everything, and I definitely felt I should be taking up less space in the world.
Learning to play a sport really changed my life. I became a trustee of the Women’s Sports Foundation for 10 years, I had a website encouraging girls to know their rights through Title IX, and then eventually I took up archery because of that, and at 41 became a semi-finalist at the Olympic trials three years later. So it had a very big and lasting impact on my life.
Does the conversation around women in media feel different now? Does having actual numbers through the work of the institute help move the conversation?
That’s an excellent thought, because there is definitely far more talk about it now than back then. I even felt some compunction to not complain about not having enough parts, saying, ‘Oh, I’m just taking a vacation or a break,’ or ‘I’m just really fussy.’ Which I am, but don’t ever admit that there aren’t enough parts or you might seem unpopular. But now, as we see, so many of my peers and myself are talking about it and bringing it up, saying, ‘Hey, I’m not getting paid equally,’ ‘Hey, there’s not enough parts” (rather) than, ‘I was turned down because I was too old at With Jessica Capshaw in ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. 36.’ And definitely that has changed, though whether that will create more change we have yet to see.
So numbers, two things: One is, children’s entertainment media, I figured out a way to address it, to attack the problem that is tremendously effective, which is getting the numbers. It’s made all the difference. People didn’t know, the people making kid’s entertainment, they had no idea they were leaving out that many female characters in the world that was being created. So the numbers have made all the difference, and we’ve seen lots of evidence that merely learning the numbers is working because people making kids’ entertainment actually care about kids.
However, for behind the camera, the numbers and the data have done absolutely nothing. The percentage of female directors has been known for decades.
There is nobody who would say, ‘I’m shocked to find out how few female directors there are.’ So that has no impact, knowing the numbers, and to generalise completely I would say that on-screen lack of women is unconscious bias, and from the evidence one would have to assume that behind the camera is conscious bias. So numbers are not going to change that and what I think will, is people doing like Ryan Murphy is doing and saying, ‘I’m just going to [hire] half [women] and making it happen. I just am, I’m not going to complain that there’s not enough, I’m going to find them and hire them.’
“I had never really played any sports, and I definitely couldn’t play baseball when I got cast. And so I trained really hard, and it was the first time that I was told that I had untapped athletic ability.”