20 Women Changing TV’s Narrative

For much of its history, television’s story has been written mostly by white men. 

It wasn’t until the late 70s, with people like Madeline Anderson — the first Black woman to produce and direct a syndicated TV show — that things started to shift.

We still have a long way to go. Yet, in the last 10 years, that painfully slow change has accelerated, and some very cool women are leading the charge.

It’s an exciting time in the world of TV, and we wanted to celebrate some of the fantastic women working behind the scenes to challenge the status quo and change the story.

Here, in no particular order, are 20 women changing TV’s narrative.

1. Tanya Saracho

Tanya Saracho worked on shows like Devious Maids, Looking, and How To Get Away with Murder before producing her breakthrough series, Vida.

Vida examined immigration, gentrification, queerness, and female sexuality in intersectional and nuanced ways. It celebrated the diversity within marginalized communities and offered a rich story about family and identity.

For the series, Saracho hired a crew of mostly Latinx women. This gave the series additional complexity and depth as the crew brought their unique lived experiences to all the show’s different layers.

While Vida ended after just three seasons, Saracho is just getting started.

In 2020 she signed a deal with Universal Content Productions to produce new TV series, a podcast, and perhaps most excitingly, create a talent incubator program to support Latinx storytellers. 

With a new deal and resources at her disposal, Saracho is poised to be a prominent presence that will continue to shape TV through her own work and the doors she opens for others.

2. Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay began her film career behind the camera in 2005. She saved up money and shot her first short film over the holidays. From there, her career continued to grow and transform the media landscape.

From her work in film to her work in TV on projects like the Netflix documentary, 13th and her Emmy-winning limited series, When They See Us, Ava’s work has been a seminal part of conversations about how we understand ourselves and our history.

Those contributions aren’t limited to her work as a director, either. Seeing the need for diversity and inclusion of marginalized voices, specifically Black and female voices, DuVernay created Array Films a distribution company with the mission of building a whole new generation of socially-minded filmmakers.

On her show Queen Sugar, she’s made it her mission to work with a different female director for every episode. She also put women in leadership roles as writers and department heads. 

Ava DuVernay is an activist, and that lens has and will continue to shape the stories she tells and how she chooses to tell them.

3. Janet Mock

Janet Mock was a well-known leader in the Trans community long before joining the pioneering series Pose.

As co-producer for the series, though, Mock became the first Trans woman of color to write and direct an episode of TV. She is an essential part of creating the multi-dimensional stories Pose tells about Trans women of color.

A particularly poignant example of Mock’s contribution is Pose Season 2 Episode 4, “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” which she co-wrote with Ryan Murphy.

The episode focuses on the epidemic of violence against Trans women. It’s devastating and all too relevant. It also subverts painfully common tropes that exploit violence against Trans women as a plot device or spectacle. Instead, the story is about the life taken and the lives of those they touched.

After decades of Trans bodies being used as props for police procedurals and fodder for shocking twists, this heartfelt and human portrayal of this issue stood out in a meaningful way. It’s just one example of how Mock is raising the bar for Trans representation and making sure Trans stories are told with respect and compassion. 

To paraphrase Mock, the lasting legacy of Pose is the people they equipped, empowered, hired, and recruited to tell their own stories. It’s a legacy that will be felt long after the show ends and one that she was an integral part of creating.

4. Katori Hall

Not only is Katori Hall changing the narrative, but she is furthering conversations on topics that need to stay in the spotlight.

Hall’s P-Valley is a television adaptation of her own play that centers on a strip club in a predominately Black community in Mississippi. This Delta Noir drama features important representation and a focus on social issues, including the stigma of sex work and queer narratives.

She gives audiences a gritty, no-holds-barred look into the particular struggle of being Black, poor, and on the fringe of what is viewed as a socially acceptable society. But, more importantly, she gives these fictional characters an authentically human voice.

The story is told with the utmost respect to the craft of exotic dancing and those that do it. That respect is evident on screen.

Hall hired all women directors for P-Valley’s first season and the show benefits greatly coming from the perspective of women and being told through a female gaze.

In 2020, Hall signed an overall deal with Lionsgate Television which includes a fund to commission Black playwrights who will have the opportunity to be mentored by Hall, expanding her already impressive contributions as a changemaker.

5. Issa Rae

Issa Rae didn’t wait for someone to let her tell the stories she wanted to see. She made her own way.

Frustrated with the state of representation of Black women in the media and tired of waiting on an industry uninterested in prioritizing Black stories, Rae did something. She created the popular web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

The series then went on to become the foundation of Rae’s acclaimed HBO comedy, Insecure.  

Now filming the fifth and final season of Insecure, Rae’s career has exploded, especially behind the scenes.

In 2021 Rae launched Hoorae Media. Hoorae brings all of her companies — which include a production company, management company, and record label — under one umbrella to support Black talent and nurture a community of creators across the entertainment industry.

From web series creator to Hollywood powerhouse, Issa Rae is a force to be reckoned with. She continues to make her own way and always brings others along with her as she does. 

6. Laurie Nunn

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“I wish I’d known this stuff when I was in my 20s.”

This thought has crossed the mind of almost every Sex Education viewer past their teenage years. The creator herself says it about her own show.

Laurie Nunn had very few credits to her name when Netflix picked up her pilot for Sex Education. She even came close to giving up writing altogether. Lucky for us, things didn’t work out that way.

Sex education in the US and around the world is severely lacking. Nunn’s Sex Education is filling a much-needed gap with frankness, humor, and heart. There’s a lot of important information regarding sexual health and relationships, but it feels like the furthest thing from a sex-ed textbook. 

Consent, body-shaming, asexuality, masturbation, and sexual assault are just a small sample of the taboo topics Sex Education tackles. These are topics few other shows even attempt to explore, let alone with the forthright honesty of Nunn and Sex Education.   

7. Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel first caught people’s attention with her Bafta-winning comedy, Chewing Gum. Running for two seasons, Chewing Gum announced the arrival of a new auteur with a distinct and singular vision.

Through brash, sometimes awkward humor, and a refreshing depiction of London’s council estates, Coel challenged norms. She explored the convergence of ethnicity, class, sexuality, and faith, garnering critical praise and establishing Coel as a rising star.

Following Chewing Gum’s success, Coel partnered with HBO and the BBC for her next project, I May Destroy You. The twelve-part limited series is a fictionalized account of Coel’s own sexual assault during the making of Chewing Gum. It is a difficult, often unsettling meditation on consent and trauma.

Each episode asks uncomfortable questions and gives no easy answers. It’s introspective and probing. The series is radically different from any other show or film about sexual assault.

I May Destroy You won near-universal praise as one of the best series of 2020 and solidified Coel as an essential and provocative voice.

Just at the beginning of her career, Michaela Coel has already distinguished herself as a once-in-a-generation talent. She will no doubt continue to push us to think deeper and ask brave questions about ourselves and society.

8. Lisa Hanawalt

Adult animation has largely been a boys club. Lisa Hanawalt is crashing that club and moving the genre forward. 

Hanawalt began her TV career as the production designer for the long-running and celebrated series BoJack Horseman before creating her own series, Tuca and Bertie 

Tuca and Bertie is about female friendship, specifically that of its title characters –who also happen to be bird people — and it premiered to significant critical acclaim in 2019.

Speaking about the series, Hanawalt said she wanted to tell honest, nuanced stories about women from women’s perspectives. That perspective makes Tuca and Bertie feel immediately different from its peers. 

With a surrealistic style and irreverent, high-energy humor, the series deftly delves into difficult topics like anxiety, sexual assault, and loss. It touches on the complicated nature of friendship and the pressure of navigating the world as a woman and a millennial.

Hanawalt uses whimsical animation to tell vulnerable stories that hit close to home. Stories we don’t often see in animation, and from a perspective, we see even less.

9. Gloria Calderón Kellett

Starting with How I Met Your Mother, Gloria Calderón Kellett worked on several shows before signing on — along with Mike Royce — as co-showrunner for the groundbreaking reboot of Norman Lear’s One Day at a Time.

One Day at a Time was adored for its humor and heart. It was also celebrated for its beautiful portrayal of a Latinx family and LGBTQ+ representation. 

The series discussed immigration, gender, mental health, and addiction, with humanity, empathy, and belly laugh-level humor. 

Sadly, One Day at a Time was canceled in 2020, but Calderón Kellett is still very much in demand.

In 2019 she signed a deal with Amazon to produce shows and films through her production company, GloNation, and has been excitedly teasing her new project.

Gloria Calderón Kellett is ready to change the status quo, and she’s already hard at work creating stories and characters to do just that.

10. Crystal Moselle

After garnering attention for her documentary Wolfpack and her debut narrative film Skate Kitchen, Crystal Moselle brought her unique style and empathetic eye to HBO with her series, Betty.

Based on her film Skate Kitchen, Betty follows a group of young women navigating their lives, relationships, and the historically male-dominated world of skateboarding.

Moselle combines documentary-like technique with moments of beautiful visual flair to tell a story about friendship and community. Betty centers women, most of whom are women of color and several who are queer, in a community that has been almost exclusively associated with men.

And, she does it with unpretentious realism and infectious joy.  

Moselle defies conventions about how we tell women’s stories. Her vision is a captivating departure from the stylized, glossy images we’re so used to seeing on our screens.

11. Emily Andras

Emily Andras, showrunner of Wynonna Earp, believes creators have to decide what they will fight for. Andras chose to fight for more stories that center queer characters and women.

She puts complicated, three-dimensional women and LGBTQ+ characters at the heart of her shows and in genres, they’ve been historically excluded from. 

There’s the sublimely romantic WayHaught relationship and queer characters of Wynonna Earp, for example.

But, there’s also Andras’s response to series lead, Melanie Scrofano’s, pregnancy while filming Season 2. Rather than approaching it as a problem to be worked around, Andras embraced it. 

She made Wynonna a badass pregnant superhero and told a beautifully touching story built on the pregnancy. At a time when we still hear about actors being penalized for getting pregnant, Andras’s decision to tell that story felt wonderfully defiant.

Andras is changing the narrative off-screen too. Her bond with fans fostered a connection between Wynonna Earp’s fans, cast, and crew, unlike anything else on TV.

It empowered fans, built a community, and modeled ways to work with fans to create a life for underdog shows beyond what happens on screen.

As it stands now, Wynonna Earp’s fourth season was the show’s last. But, whatever happens next, Andras has a legion of loyal supporters ready to see how she creates queer and female spaces in genre TV next. 

12. Liz Hsiao Lan Alper

Liz Alper is the co-founder — along with fellow writer Deirdre Mangan – of #PayUpHollywood, a project that pushes for better pay and working conditions for the industry’s support staff, and she is making some serious waves behind the scenes. 

The project’s advocacy and its surveys of pay and work conditions started an important conversation about the unlivable wages and expectations for people working in entry-level, support roles.

Since #PayUpHollywood started, five agencies (CAA, ICM, UTA, WME, and Verve) have increased their assistants’ hourly rate. The #PayUpHollywood coalition also started the Hollywood Support Staff Relief fund, raising over half a million dollars to support staffers laid off because of COVID.

In March 2021, she joined Tanya Saracho and Mike Royce to create a program to train people from marginalized communities as writing assistants and script coordinators. 

These positions are often gateways to careers in TV and film. By creating opportunities at the entry-level, the team hopes to build a foundation for more inclusivity at all levels continuing Alper’s efforts to change how Hollywood from the ground up.

13. Phoebe Waller-Bridge

The Guardian paraphrased Phoebe Waller-Bridge saying, “I have an appetite for transgressive women.” There is no better description of Waller-Bridge’s work than that. 

Her work is rebellious, and the women she writes about insolently defy ideas of feminine propriety. She allows the women of her projects to be selfish and self-centered. They are crass and take up space.

Her characters are all the things women are told they can’t be if they want to be likable, and we love them for it. In fact, it’s exhilarating. 

Whether it’s her breakthrough series Fleabag or her colossal hit Killing Eve, Waller-Bridge isn’t interested in good women or bad women. She’s interested in telling stories that grip us, about characters who fascinate us. Stories that expose the darker, messier parts of human nature, unbound by conventions or respectability. 

Her next big TV project is an exciting one. She is partnering with Donald Glover to executive produce and star in a TV adaptation of the spy movie Mr. and Ms. Smith. There aren’t many details yet announced about the new project, but it’s a safe bet that there will be a marvelously transgressive woman at the center. 

14. Linda Yvette Chávez

Linda Yvette Chávez almost gave up on her dream. She bounced around doing different jobs in the TV and film industry but not the one she wanted, writing.

Before she let herself move on, Chávez got a fateful call. It was from Marvin Lemus asking her to be a co-creator on his project, Gentefied. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Gentefied is a bilingual series that tells the human stories behind topics, like gentrification, that often get abstracted in larger political conversations. The show finds humor and heartbreak as it wrestles with complex questions about identity and the American dream.

It’s a funny and heartfelt love letter to Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, that asks what it means to be part of a community and explores the feeling of being in-between. It grapples with the tension of competing interests within a community and the compromises people make to survive and thrive.

Chávez was named a writer to watch on Robert Rodriguez, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Zoe Saldana’s Latinxt List in 2019 and 2020, and there is no doubt they’re right.

15. Laverne Cox

Laverne Cox as Sophia on Orange Is The New Black was one of the first three-dimensional, sympathetic portrayals of a Trans character on TV. Especially on a show as widely popular as Orange Is The New Black. 

That alone makes Cox an important figure for LGBTQ+ representation. It also gave her a tremendous platform. One Cox has used to advocate for more and better Trans representation on TV. 

One example of that effort behind the scenes is her work as a producer on the Netflix documentary Disclosure, which won GLAADD’s award for Outstanding Documentary in 2021.

Disclosure tells the history of Trans representation in media. It lays out the tropes and exposes the harmful messages that have plagued Trans representation for decades.

More than articulating the history, the documentary makes a case for why it matters, both as something that can uplift Trans people and as a matter of safety and equity for the Trans Community.  

Whether through participation in projects likes Disclosure or scripted TV that centers marginalized communities, Cox continues to ask us to look at the media we consume more critically and inspires a belief that we can and will do better.

16. Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti were frequent collaborators with successful film careers before taking a turn at serialized storytelling for their most recent collaboration, Made in Heaven.

Set against India’s booming wedding industry, Akhtar and Kagti — along with co-collaborators Alankrita Shrivastava and Nitya Mehra — use this tangled melodrama to scrutinizes the fraught tensions of identity, family, gender, and privilege.

They interrogate Delhi society with a critical eye and offer a complicated, unromanticized picture of the segment of Indian society they depict.

The women behind Made in Heaven are also part of a changing narrative for India’s film industry. Filmmaking in India — as in Hollywood — has been historically dominated by men with little opportunity for women. That trend has been changing, though, as filmmakers like Akhtar and Kagti make space for women in one of the world’s biggest film industries.

Akhtar and Kagti are part of a new generation of Indian Filmmakers. They are expanding how stories about India and Indian culture are told in India and beyond. 

17. Desiree Akhavan

We don’t have many stories about being bisexual. There are great queer stories, but they tend to lump queer identities together and flatten them into a monolithic experience.

We have amazing bi and pansexual characters on TV. But, examples that actually tell stories about bisexuality or pansexuality are exceedingly rare. That’s what makes Desiree Akhavan’s series, The Bisexual, so refreshing. It tells a queer story specifically about the bisexual experience.

The series takes on things like biphobia in the queer community, stereotypes about monogamy, and internalized fears of not being queer enough. All real challenges that bisexuals and pansexuals contend with but that get lost in the generality of LGBTQ+ representation.

Despite an increased presence of bisexual characters, bisexuality remains a mystery for many people. With The Bisexual, Akhavan attempts to address that and demystify the largest segment of the LGBTQ+ community.

18. Mara Brock Akil

Mara Brock Akil began her career as a writer for the popular sitcom Moesha before serving as a writer and supervising producer on The Jamie Foxx Show.  By the time she created Akil Productions with her husband, Salim Akil, Brock Akil was already an important part of TV history. 

Through Akil Production, Brock Akil co-created UPN’s iconic Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane for BET, and Black Lightning — the first Black superhero TV adaptation — for The CW.

Black Lightning is the first time a live-action superhero series has highlighted real issues that affect the Black community, placing a Black family at the center of a superhero series.

The show also features the first major screen adaptation of a Black lesbian superhero in Jefferson’s daughter, Anissa (aka Thunder). 

With Black Lightning coming to a close and a spin-off in the works, Brock Akil will be taking her talents to Netflix, where she says she plans to continue to do what she does best, “paint portraits and murals of women, Black people and anyone else whose story is missing from this golden age of television.”

19. Robin Thede

Robin Thede’s career is full of firsts. She was the first Black woman to be the head writer on a late-night show and the first Black woman to be head writer for a White House correspondents dinner.

Her Emmy nominated series, A Black Lady Sketch Show, is the first of its kind created by a Black woman. It’s also the first to feature a cast and writers room staffed entirely by Black women. 

Every step of Thede’s career has broken barriers. It’s something she has described as her “badge of honor, but the industry’s badge of shame” when reflecting on the lack of inclusion and slow pace of change.

But by being the first, Thede has become the role model she wished she had. She is the trailblazer forging a path for others to follow.

Thede’s impact is more than a collection of firsts, though. Her work is incisive and brutally funny. She puts the different perspectives of Black women at the forefront in a space where they have often been tokenized and minimized.

Thede has no plans to slow down. With the return of A Black Lady Sketch Show and a new multi-year deal with Warner Brothers, Thede will continue to push boundaries and change the game for years to come. 

20. Yvette Lee Bowser

Over the course of a 30-plus year career, Yvette Lee Bowser worked her way up from an apprentice on A Different World to a celebrated showrunner with her own production company called SisterLee Productions. 

In between, she created the iconic series Living Single, which made her the first Black woman to develop her own prime-time series. She was also a producer for the beloved series Hanging With Mr. Cooper, Half and Half, and Black-ish, as well as the showrunner for the TV adaptation of Justin Simien’s Dear White People. 

Bowser has been a witness and an important contributor to a changing TV landscape throughout her distinguished career.

She told TVLine that through the ebbs and flows, the most important difference between now and when she was starting out is the shift from an interest in the optics of inclusion to investment in it.

It’s a change Bowser intends to continue to be a part of with her new series, Run The World, set to premiere soon on STARZ.

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Who are the women you think are changing TV’s narrative? Let us know in the comments below.

Additional Contributions from Erin Allen and Brianna Martinez

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