If last year’s Women in Hollywood came in the midst of a reckoning, then what happens now, in the aftermath of the seismic shift that was the #MeToo movement? This year’s honorees are defined by a question: Where do we go from here?
For the 2019 Women in Hollywood, the answer comes with plotting a path unknown.“No point in going down that same Old Town Road,” says ELLE Icon Dolly Parton. “We got other roads to travel.” Yes, Parton was referencing her decision to pass on a collaboration with Lil Nas X, but her directive holds true for all. New roads are leading to projects that blow the lid off once-taboo topics, like Bombshell, a film that follows the Fox News scandal involving Roger Ailes. “The story it’s trying to tell is broader than Fox News. It’s much more about sexual harassment and the women,” says Nicole Kidman, who plays Gretchen Carlson. Mindy Kaling’s Late Night explores the power imbalance of a writers’ room, where a woman of color sits at the table among a sea of white men. “That experience [of a diversity hire] is so universal for so many women who are trying to do something that they were not trained to do, and who have ambition, and who don’t see people who look like them succeeding,” Kaling says.
And even more stories of barrier breaking await: Natalie Portman reflects on the modern definition of feminism (“When you show a woman being a complete human being, with the bad as well as the good, that’s feminist”); Scarlett Johansson explores the sense of being trapped in Marriage Story; Zendaya admits her daily battle with anxiety; Gwyneth Paltrow reveals her “ambition has been unleashed” as a company founder; and the three-woman dream team of Queen & Slim have an important dialogue about the added weight they carry with their art. We can all acknowledge that the foundation was set—now it’s time to raise the roof.
