Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Lily Gladstone and Emmy nominee Emma Corrin are set to kick off “Live in Front of a Student Audience,” a new conversation series hosted by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder and director of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
The series will officially launch on Feb. 22 with Gladstone discussing her portrayal of Mollie Kyle in Apple Original Films’ “Killers of the Flower Moon,” followed by a discussion on Feb. 26 with Corrin, who follows up her Emmy-nominated turn as Princess Diana on “The Crown” with roles in “Murder at the End of the World” and “Deadpool 3.”
As indicated by the series’ title, Dr. Smith will host the interviews live in front of a student audience on USC’s campus and the footage will also serve as a filmed podcast for the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative’s digital channels.
In a statement explaining the impetus for the series, Dr. Smith noted that the idea came from her daily interaction with the Gen Z students on campus.
“I am certain that this generation is the one who will actually create change in entertainment through their bold vision, unified voice, and inclusive values,” she said. “By hosting these conversations, I want our students to hear from trailblazing and influential leaders and for those leaders to engage with our bright, creative, and incisive students on topics that matter to them.”
Kicking off the series with Gladstone is fitting not only because the actor has become the first Native American woman to be nominated for best actress at the Academy Awards, but also since the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative published a study last October that punctuated the significance of her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon” examining the prevalence of Native American characters in popular films. Results of the study were “abysmal,” with researchers finding that across more than 62,000 speaking characters in 1,600 movies, less than one-quarter of 1% were held by Native Americans, thus underscoring the “erasure and discrimination against” Indigenous people and their stories.
News of the ongoing series — for which more speakers will soon be announced — comes following the release of the Inclusion Initiative’s latest study, which examined the top-grossing films of 2023. Researchers found that, despite the historic box office success of “Barbie,” only 30 movies featured women and girls as protagonists in a sharp downturn from 2022, which tallied 44 films, and a number identical to that in 2010.
“To see this reversal is both startling and in direct contrast to all of the talk of 2023 as the ‘year of the woman,'” Smith stated.
