Geena Davis is a force in this industry. Not only is she a hugely talented Academy Award-winner with a slew of iconic titles on her filmography like Thelma & Louise, A League of Their Own, Beetlejuice, and more, but she’s also actively working to change this industry for the better via the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and also through the Bentonville Film Festival. If that’s not the definition of a perfect guest for Collider Ladies Night, I don’t know what is!

With Bentonville having just celebrated its eighth year, Davis took the time to join me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to revisit some of her past titles and discuss exactly how those experiences sparked the goals she fights for today.

Olivia Newman, Geena Davis and Elizabeth Gabler at Bentonville 2022
Image via The Bentonville Film Festival

As one might expect, that journey through her filmography had to begin with film #1, 1982’s Tootsie. Given that Tootsie marked the very first professional set Davis ever stepped foot on, there were many things she didn’t know about the filmmaking process just yet. She explained:

“I didn’t ask any questions. I could have asked anything! It was my first movie. Nobody would have thought anything, but I was so shy and didn’t want to be embarrassed that I asked nothing. I assumed that everybody came every day, and so I did. [Laughs] I arrived at 6:30am every day, and some days I shot and some days I didn’t, but nobody ever said, ‘You know, by the way, you don’t have to come on the days you’re not shooting.’ But I had a great time so I can’t say I wish I hadn’t done that, but I don’t know what people must have thought when I came every day! And also, I had no idea you weren’t supposed to sit next to the director and every day I would get my chair and just park it right next to Sydney Pollack and sit next to him all day long. But he liked it! He enjoyed it, he said. But I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that!”

tootsie-cast
Image via Columbia Pictures

In addition to Tootsie being a phenomenal learning experience, in the early days, Davis also benefited greatly from having the ideal agent by her side, David Eidenberg. Here’s what she said when revisiting what it was like picking an agent:

“I had to get an agent once I moved to Hollywood and I interviewed with a few people that were recommended to me and every meeting was them telling me how lucky I would be to be with them. You know, ‘You’re gonna be so lucky. We represent this one and that one. You’d be so lucky.’ And then when I met David Eidenberg he said, ‘We would be so lucky to have you,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’m signing up with you!’”

That proved to be the right decision for a multitude of reasons, but Davis pinpointed one she’s especially grateful for. Without Eidenberg, Davis may never have scored the role of Thelma in 1991’s Thelma & Louise.

“I got cast in Thelma and Louise, I’m sure, ultimately, because of him because when I heard about it and wanted to be in it, it had already been cast. It was all over. But he kept calling Ridley Scott’s office saying, ‘If anything changes, if anything changes Geena’s still interested,’ for a year. And it went through like three sets of Thelma and Louise, and then finally Ridley decided, ‘I’m gonna direct it myself,’ and because of all those phone calls he said, ‘Yes, yes, I will meet with Geena. I understand she’s been very persistent.’ And so then I finally did get cast.”

Screen Shot 2022-02-09 at 12.47.09 PM
Image via MGM

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The movie wasn’t just a box office success that earned Davis an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. It was also a project that changed her life by heavily influencing her priorities when picking projects.

“Thelma and Louise really transformed my life because of the reaction that the movie got. I was used to people sometimes recognizing me on the street or in a supermarket or whatever and saying, ‘Hey, Beetlejuice! Hey, The Fly,’ or something and I was used to that, but after Thelma and Louise came out, it was completely different. If somebody recognized me from that movie, they wanted to talk to me about their experience watching it. ‘This is who I saw it with, this is how many times I saw it, my friend and I acted out your trip.’ ‘Really? Which part of it exactly did you act out?’ [Laughs] But it made me realize how few opportunities we give women to come out of a movie feeling inspired and jazzed about the female characters. And I thought, ‘Well, what a shame,’ because men get to come out of almost every movie having identified with one of the male characters, but women almost never, so I thought, ‘I’m gonna really think about that now when I make choices. I’m gonna think about, what are the women in the audience going to think about my character?’”

Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise
Image via MGM

Davis did just that and continues to do so to this day by advocating for equal representation of women in media via the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. There is loads of data out there that flat out proves this industry is falling short when it comes to diversity in front of and behind the lens. Given that Davis has inspired gigantic corporations to act on the data she’s collected, I opted to ask her what the key was to actually making that happen. We’ve seen many major studios fail to act on data proving the industry’s representation shortcomings. How did Davis actually get them to do something with the information she provided?

“I had noticed the problem of there being too few female characters in what’s made for kids, including some preschool shows and movies made for kids, PG and things like that, and I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that in the 21st Century we would be showing kids that boys and girls are not equal. So I didn’t intend to try to do something about it, but when I asked people in Hollywood about it, every single person said, ‘That’s not true anymore. It’s all been fixed.’ And they would name a movie with like one female character as proof that there was gender equality. So I thought, ‘I want to get the data, because I’m pretty sure I’m right and then I can go directly to the people making it.’ No middleman or anything because, you know, people know who I am and I can go directly to them and very privately share it with them because I know that it’s unconscious bias. Because otherwise, they’d be saying, ‘Yeah, we know,’ but they were all like, ‘No, no, no. It’s not true.’ So I was able to prove to them that it was true and every network and studio and production company I shared it with was shocked. They were shocked that there were so few female characters. They had no idea! And so the data and realizing their own bias did the trick. They were instantly making changes. Data won’t do that with everything because, for example, everybody has known for decades how few female directors there are. Nobody doesn’t know how few there are, and that information does nothing to make the numbers go up. But in my case, because it was unconscious bias for on screen, it worked to show the data.”

Bentonville Film Festival
Image via The Bentonville Film Festival

Davis also continues to make a difference via The Bentonville Film Festival, a festival that takes place in Bentonville, Arkansas and is designed to champion inclusion in the entertainment industry. She further explained:

“We are very mission driven, and our mission is to champion storytelling both in front of and behind the camera that’s very diverse. It’s not controversial to say, it shouldn’t be, that you want the population in front of and behind the camera to reflect the population, you know? 50% women, 40% people of color, all of that. 20% people with disabilities. And so that’s the goal. So we actually over-highlight all these underrepresented groups, but it’s just to show what fabulous movies you can make, how impactful they are, how you totally relate to these stories that are not your comfort zone and we’ve had tremendous success with it. It’s our eighth year this year!”

Looking for more from Davis on the Bentonville Film Festival and more past titles like A League of Their Own, The Fly, and GLOW? You can watch her episode of Collider Ladies Night at the top of this article or listen to the conversation uncut in podcast form below: