INSPIRATION / ROB URBAN
Geena Davis
A bigger world
fits on the screen.
The actor who turned an observation into a continuing invitation to look again.
A casting decision can be defended as a matter of taste. Ten casting decisions can be defended as ten matters of taste. At some point, however, somebody ought to count the chairs.
Geena Davis helped make that somebody an institution.
I admire what she has done with that simple act of attention. Davis noticed an absence, took it seriously and helped create a way for other people to examine it. The result gives writers, producers and casting directors something useful to bring back to the work.
Her screen career includes Thelma & Louise, opposite Susan Sarandon, and the role of Dottie Hinson in A League of Their Own. Those are substantial entries in the history of who gets to carry a movie. But her work as founder and chair of the Geena Davis Institute addresses a different problem: how to examine the thousands of choices that never become famous enough to receive an argument of their own.
THE FIRST QUESTION
What had
everyone
stopped
noticing?
In her 2022 conversation with The New Yorker, Davis recalled watching preschool television with her daughter and noticing how few female characters appeared. When she raised the imbalance in industry meetings, people believed it had already been corrected. She decided research might help them see it.
That is an optimistic response to being told you are mistaken. It leaves open the possibility that people care about the same thing you do and have simply failed to notice something.
The Institute, whose work dates to 2004, gives the conversation another starting point: a defined body of work, a question, and something that can be counted. Celebrity can get the meeting. Research gives the meeting a reason to continue after the celebrity leaves.
Davis also described sharing findings privately, giving creators information they could act on. I like the confidence in that approach. A person can be invited to make a better choice without having to spend the whole conversation defending the last one.
The ambition is generous: more people with interesting lives, more stories to tell, more possibilities for someone sitting down to watch.
Give her a life
inside the story.
Consider the difference between being included in a film and being given a life inside it.
The Institute’s 2025 study Missing in Action, by Meredith Conroy, Erin Cassese and Cameron Espinoza, examined aging and menopause in popular films from 2009 through 2024. Procter & Gamble sponsored the research. Among 225 films prominently featuring a female character aged forty or older, fourteen mentioned menopause. Only one gave it a prominent storyline. Those figures describe that selected sample, not every film released during those years.
The same study found a difference in how often characters forty and older were given an occupation: 72 percent of men, compared with 53 percent of women.
A character can have a name and lines and still spend the entire movie responding to somebody else’s decisions. A character can be loved without being allowed much curiosity. A character can be present in the family photograph while the plot has quietly retired her.
What interests me is the creative space those numbers reveal. Work can give a character expertise, a rival, a source of pride or a decision she cannot avoid. When the story leaves that part of her life blank, it may be leaving some of its best material unwritten.
Imagine, as a writing exercise, a woman running a business while caring for her father. Either responsibility could supply the story’s central conflict. The weaker version makes both responsibilities shorthand for exhaustion. The stronger version asks what she wants, where she is competent, what she misunderstands and what she will do that cannot be undone. Now there is somebody to write about.
I find that possibility energizing. An overlooked person may already be carrying the next compelling story.
THE COMEDY QUESTION
Who gets
to make
the joke?
A second Institute study makes an equally useful distinction between a character who is funny and a character who is the joke.
In Body Representation and Portrayals in Children’s Television, Larissa Terán and Meredith Conroy examined new, United States-originated English-language scripted series from 2022 through 2024, using program data from Luminate. Characters coded as fat were as likely as other characters to be portrayed as funny, but more likely to be the butt of a joke: 12.2 percent against 8.5 percent. The report uses “fat” as a neutral descriptor.
The comparison concerns those sampled programs. It gives a writer a precise question to ask about a scene: who has command of the laugh?
A person who tells a joke can surprise us. They have noticed something. They have decided how to say it. They may be using humor to charm, deflect, compete or get through an uncomfortable afternoon. There is a mind at work.
That is a richer source of comedy than asking appearance to do all the work. The pleasure comes from discovering how this particular person thinks.
There is no need to make every character admirable. A world in which everyone behaves beautifully would be a difficult place to set a comedy, and an unbearable place to attend a dinner party. The richer possibility is to distribute foolishness, cleverness, vanity and generosity widely enough that appearance does not arrive with the whole personality already attached.
This is one reason the Institute’s work feels hopeful to me. Looking carefully at representation can make the storytelling more inventive. A familiar shortcut becomes a chance to write something better.
A place for
careful attention.
Davis’s name makes the Institute recognizable. Its current team includes president and CEO Madeline Di Nonno, research and insights vice president Meredith Conroy, media research director Larissa Terán and a wider staff of researchers and operational colleagues. The reports have authors. The organization has work that cannot be done by recognition alone.
I admire Davis for helping create an organization in which that expertise has a home. The researchers make distinctions that a memorable speech alone cannot supply: which programs were studied, how characters were described and what the findings can support.
The Institute places research and collaboration with media makers at the center of its approach. That combination matters. A useful finding needs someone who can carry it into the next script, design meeting or casting conversation.
The reports also make it possible to keep looking. Progress can be examined again as new work appears. The question stays alive after the applause.
The next draft
has more room.
What stays with me about Davis is her belief that imagination can become more attentive. We can notice the person who has been placed in the background and ask what would happen if the story belonged to her for a while.
That question offers a great deal to an actor. It also offers something to an audience: the pleasure of a person who has more to do than confirm what we already expected.
I value the patience behind this work. Davis has helped make a concern visible, specific and usable by people making thousands of small decisions. The next choice is still theirs. They have more information with which to make it.
For people who make things, the invitation is unusually concrete. Look again at the people your work gives authority, desire and a future. Then look at the people it uses to fill the room.
You may already have enough chairs. The next draft can give more of their occupants something to do.
About the Institute and the studies
What is Geena Davis’s role at the Institute?
Geena Davis is the founder and chair of the Geena Davis Institute. Its team includes president and CEO Madeline Di Nonno and researchers who study representation in entertainment and media.
What did Missing in Action study?
The 2025 report examined aging and menopause in popular films from 2009 through 2024. Its selected sample included 225 films prominently featuring a female character aged forty or older. Fourteen mentioned menopause, and one gave it a prominent storyline.
What did the children’s television body study compare?
The study examined new U.S.-originated English-language scripted series from 2022 through 2024. It compared representation and portrayals across body types, including whether characters were funny and whether they were the targets of jokes.
Research notes: The two studies, their authors and their sample boundaries are identified in the essay. The Institute’s team and history pages and Davis’s 2022 New Yorker interview provide the organizational and personal context.
I’m Rob Urban. I write about people whose work gives us more to notice. Read about my writing and consulting if that conversation interests you.