RYAN MURPHY

Sitting in a meeting one day, Ryan Murphy looked around and realized that he was the only gay show creator in a room full of straight men. If he didn’t use his influence to increase the representation of the LGBTQ community in front of and behind the camera, then who else would?

That epiphany led to the creation of Pose, the groundbreaking Emmy-winning series about the Transgender community and ballroom culture in NYC in the 1980s. For HBO, he directed and produced the Emmy-winning adaptation of The Normal Heart, the Larry Kramer play about the AIDS crisis, and he won an Emmy for directing The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. He won the Tony for producing Boys in the Band on Broadway, populating the seminal play by Mart Crowley with an ALL-LGBTQ cast, and then, of course, he produced the film version for Netflix.

Murphy also created the HALF Initiative to make Hollywood more inclusive, creating equal opportunities for women, members of the LGBTQ community, and minorities behind the camera. All of his productions strive toward inclusivity.

After signing a $400 million deal with Netflix in 2019, Murphy is in the rare position to be able to use his clout to level the playing field, and he’s already produced two award-winning LGBTQ documentaries for Netflix: Secret Love and Circus of Books.

—Mike Fleming Jr.