“Diversity isn't casting one or two people of color and calling it a day. It is creating whole ecosystems and pipelines of talent and worlds of imagination that will eventually lead to a more diverse industry.”
He believes in lifting others up as he climbs, a lesson he learned from watching Black creatives like Issa Rae and Lena Waithe, people he looks to as models of possibility. He’s seen others build real infrastructure for Black actors and screenwriters to succeed and thrive. They’ve created their own production companies, their own award shows, their own support networks for their community. And they’re the ones making space for the rest of us, Dodani says.
“Diversity isn't casting one or two people of color and calling it a day. It is creating whole ecosystems and pipelines of talent and worlds of imagination that will eventually lead to a more diverse industry,” he continues. “What the Black community has done in Hollywood out of pure necessity is create parallel systems that exist both within and outside of the system. [They’ve] built something new within a very white industry, and I think we need to do that for every community.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and what seemed like America’s millionth reckoning, conversations about equity took shape in the entertainment industry too. There were passionate calls for change regarding problems such as racial typecasting, catering diversity to satisfy a white gaze, and gaping, race-based pay disparity. It was only recently that Dodani learned he was making significantly less than his white costars on just about every project.
This is the part of Hollywood that’s business-y and logistical: the contracts, the fine print — in short, the game. The amount of money an actor has made for previous roles roughly determines which ballpark they can negotiate in when getting paid for a new role. “If you are getting paid this much less on the last one, you're going to get paid this much less on the next one," Dodani says. "And it just continues to replicate itself.
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