Hey, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and at one point during the interview that you're about to hear,

Alana Mayo laughs at me. She's talking about feeling comfortable on set for the very first time in her career,

because there's finally people on set that look like her.

And I tell her that I can't believe that that has only happened now.

I don't know, call me ignorant, but I'm only viewing things in Hollywood from the outside.

And so that is why I think that someone like Alana, her perspective, is so valuable.

Alana's black. She's bisexual. she's a woman, she's in her

30s, which is notable since she's a film executive. And we talk about seeing all these different

aspects of our identity represented in Hollywood on screen and off and the pace of that change.

What's happening to really keep that momentum up? Alana leads production at

Outlier Society, which is Michael B. Jordan's production company. They are one of the pioneers in

an industry to use inclusion riders to ensure diversity on set, and this is referring to all

types of diversity. One of my personal frustrations is that we tend to use diversity,

that word diversity, and we only mean black people. And that is definitely beginning to change.

So we talk about all of this, including these signals to look out for that say this is more

than a trend. It's a movement. And it is here to stay.

From Luminary Media, you're listening to LGBTQ and A.

So we talk so much about diversity in Hollywood, and usually that encompasses actors and on-screen talent. And I'm slowly starting to see the conversations start to include people behind the scenes, which is equally as important, right?

Absolutely. The cool thing about making content is, this is, you know, cliche, but it's the collaborative nature of it. And everyone who is on the set, in my opinion, contributes to the storytelling. And so when you think about the reason why we're focused on inclusivity, wherever it appears on screen or behind camera, it's to try to create stories

that feel more representative of different types of people and experiences.

And the more people that you have around that process who reflect either a specific

experience that you're trying to convey or just different points of views, the richer, the fuller, and I think the more honest and authentic the storytelling becomes.

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