Mount Rushmore: 25 Women Who Could be CEO in the Kamala Era
From the 2022 archives: Joe Biden once promised that a woman (Black too) would become VP, but Hollywood won't, can't, doesn't ever pledge the same
This week we introduce Mount Rushmore, a series of encore columns from Richard Rushfield with newfound resonance today. On Feb. 1, 2022, Richard wrote about the beauty pageant underway as the chief of a soon-to-merge WBD, David Zaslav, interviewed potential candidates to sit atop the studios right below him, the job held under AT&T ownership by Jason Kilar. Every name — and there were many — was male. Which prompted Richard to assess just what kind of profile is constantly, consistently, always in contention for the top jobs in entertainment, and the 25 women who could/should at least be considered for the highest offices in Hollywood. To this day, our big streamers and studios have not and never had one single female CEO sitting at the very top.
Now with the first woman president possibly on the horizon yet again, and her nomination/coronation underway in Chicago this week, it felt like time to revisit Hollywood’s aversion to going where nearly every other industry has gone — and now, possibly, the White House: Putting a woman in the biggest corner office.
Enjoy and let us know what you think.
Slightly abridged, from the archives of February 2022.
As Discovery and Warner amble towards the altar, Hollywood prepares to enter into its parlor favorite game — who will get the big job?
It’s a game not unlike the Victorian jockeying around an available heiress with a massive fortune who has just come onto the market, as the elite ponder which of their number will claim the great prize.
The Hollywood version of the roundelay is similar to that Victorian version in that the winner can only be a man. In 19th century London such were the rules of matrimony. And here because, every single time there’s a seat open — well, who else would you give it to? It’s such a massive job . . . there are only a few people qualified, don’t you know.
And so the olde timey primogeniture sweepstakes will boil down to:
Former studio head who never got a chance before he fell afoul of his then-boss
MBA Keep the Trains Running No-Nonsense Manager who was CFO of some studio a few years ago
MBA who did a bang-up job as head of some division, not film or TV
Fifty-something “boyish” Wunderkind (did something “digital”) who wows the Boomer Elite every time they run into him at Nobu
So many different varieties of usual suspects! But however it goes, when they sift through all the different qualities that one looks for in a leader and pick the best fit for an enormous job, where the needle lands just somehow 100 percent of the time on someone who may be a lot of things — as long as one of those things is male.
And listen, maybe the very best possible person on Earth to run Warner Bros. Discovery, when they carefully weigh all the needs and test scores and Myers Briggs and letters of recommendation and extracurriculars, when they weigh that against the needs of the company for innovation vs. steadiness, for financial acumen vs talent relations — maybe when the computer spits out the best person for all this, there is a male candidate who is incontestably the perfect fit.
But isn’t it getting past weird how that happens not most of the time, but every . . . single . . . time?
What do Bob Chapek, Bob Bakish, Tony Vinciquerra, Jeff Shell, Ted Sarandos, Zack and Jamie and Mike Hopkins all have in common?
What do they share in common with the heads of every single agency and major management company while you’re at it?
Hey, they weighed the candidates, and that’s who the best person for the job turned out to be! Every time, isn’t that wild? What are the chances?
It’s gotten so the women of Hollywood don’t even seem to hold out any hope that this time it might be different, years after #MeToo, decades after the opening of the workplace.