Geena Davis is giving high praise to Mission: Impossible, The Final Reckoning for what she calls its “great diversity.”
The 69-year-old actress recently shared her thoughts on the latest installment of the action franchise, and what stood out to her wasn’t just the explosions or Tom Cruise’s stunts it was the inclusive casting.
“Did you see the new Mission: Impossible yet?” she asked in an interview with Deadline. “I noticed the great diversity in there, women left and right, all over the place, and people of colour and it’s just normal and natural. But they clearly, in my estimation, put a lot of thought into that.”
Davis has long been a vocal advocate for inclusion in media. Her Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, which she launched 20 years ago, focuses on pushing for accurate and fair representation of women and underrepresented groups in film and TV. She’s also the driving force behind the Bentonville Film Festival, a project aimed at promoting diversity both on screen and behind the camera.
“In my institute, we focus on what’s on screen,” she explained. “And in the festival, we take into account both on screen and behind the camera. So, our directors and writers and producers are very diverse as well as the cast on screen.”
For Davis, it’s not just about fairness, it’s about economics. She believes that movies reflecting real-world diversity resonate more with audiences and perform better financially. “Ultimately, what I think we’re trying to prove is that films with unique voices that represent the population are very commercial,” she said. “Research shows that the more diversity there is on screen, the more money the movie makes. But people haven’t really taken that to heart as much as they could.”
Interestingly, the idea for the Bentonville Film Festival originated from Walmart, which is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. According to Davis, the retailer wanted each department to have a public service initiative. The home video department pitched the idea of a film festival focused on representation and Davis was approached to lead it.
“They needed to get a Robert Redford or Robert De Niro, or somebody named Robert to be the person fronting it,” she joked. “And they thought of me. I came here and talked to everybody, and I really wanted to do it.”
She’s proud of what they’ve built. “We decided to put it on very quickly, so we only had about five months to put it all together for the first iteration. But we pulled it off and it gets bigger and better every year.”
Geena Davis on film diversity isn’t just a soundbite. It’s a mission she’s committed to, and she’s not slowing down.
