Bozoma Hits Back
Transom on the final days and her Instagram rebuttal; plus: below-the-line Oscar fury
Welcome to Hollywood Transom, part of The Ankler. Written by Jeff Sneider, the column’s mission is to deliver brief scoops and news about this industry’s current state of play and its players.
1. THE DAYS BEFORE BOZOMA’S EXIT
The Transom is picking up on a few small but interesting bits of information about Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John’s exit from Netflix. The first is that something went down at the Netflix board of directors meeting shortly before Saint John was replaced by Marian Lee — we don’t know the details, but state laws generally require that a company's board of directors approve the hiring and firing of officers, so it may have been merely a pro forma vote in support of a decision already made by CEO duo Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings. The second thing… a Netflix rep adamantly denies unconfirmed scuttlebutt that Sarandos’ chief of staff, Ferial Govashiri, had discretely solicited opinion at the streamer in the days before Saint John’s departure on how employees, and in particular, Black employees, would feel about Saint John — the only Black C-suiter at Netflix — departing the company. Apparently, there was not enough pushback to change course. And while there is chatter that Ari Emanuel himself