Season 2 Of 'Jessica' Jones' Will Be Directed Exclusively By Women

Lots of people talk about the lack of diversity in Hollywood. Melissa Rosenberg is doing something about it.
Krysten Ritter filming "Jessica Jones" on June 2, 2015 in New York City.
Krysten Ritter filming "Jessica Jones" on June 2, 2015 in New York City.
Steve Sands via Getty Images

The dearth of female directors has become a rising cause of concern in Hollywood in recent years. But Marvel’s “Jessica Jones” is doing its part to even the imbalance out as much as possible.

Melissa Rosenberg, the show’s executive producer, said Friday that the show planned to employ female directors exclusively for the show’s second season, Variety’s Mo Ryan reports. Rosenberg made the remarks at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which was hosting an event about diversity in Hollywood.

Rosenberg noted that the idea wasn’t originally hers, but that she was immediately excited by the idea when someone else thought of it. She also said that creating a diverse behind-the-scenes team is “a conscious decision, and it’s very important that showrunners do that.”

Hollywood studios’ unwillingness to hire female directors has become an increasingly glaring problem in recent years as criticism the industry’s lack of diversity more generally has grown louder. According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, as few as 9 percent of the top-grossing domestic films in 2015 were directed by women.

As such, the decision to hire all-female directors falls in line with the feminist slant of the show, which follows a failed superhero as she tries her hand as a private investigator. One of the show’s stars, Rachael Taylor, said as much on Twitter when the news broke over the weekend.

As Variety noted, Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar” also hired only female directors during its first season.

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