Director, producer and writer, Janet Mock, just signed a sweet deal with Netflix, making her the first out transgender woman empowered to call the creative shots at a major content company.
The three-year multimillion-dollar pact gives the streaming giant exclusive rights to her TV series and a first-look option on feature film projects.
As part of the agreement, Mock will still serve as an exec producer and director on Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series Hollywood. Mock will continue to serve as a writer-director on Murphy’s FX series Pose.
The Netflix deal will enable Mock to create programs that employ and highlight communities that have historically been ignored by Hollywood,
“As someone who grew up in front of the TV screen, whether that was watching talk shows or family sitcoms or VHS films, I never thought that I would be embraced. And more than embraced. Given not just a seat at the table but a table of my own making.”
Mock hopes the deal “will be a huge signal boost, industrywide, to empower people and equip them to tell their own stories.”
She has projects in development include a college-set drama following a young trans woman, a series about New Orleans after the abolishment of slavery and a reboot of a classic sitcom. Cindy Holland, Netflix VP of original content says,
“As a best-selling author, producer and director, Janet Mock has demonstrated she knows how to bring her vision to thrilling, vivid life. She’s a groundbreaker and creative force who we think will fit right in here at Netflix.”
Mock, 36, was born in Hawaii and transitioned as a teen. She wrote a memoir in 2014 (which she plans to adapt) that was hailed as the first mainstream account of a young trans person’s journey. She worked for years as an editor at People magazine, and came out as trans in a 2011 article for Marie Claire.
Last fall, Murphy asked where Mock saw herself in five years, and she simply said that she wanted to be successful. Mock recalls Murphy saying,
“No. What do you want?”
Mock wanted to be her own boss. Two weeks later, she had a meeting at Netflix and walked out with a deal.
Murphy says,
“Upon my first meeting with Janet, I knew she was a star and had the stuff moguls are made of. Being able to watch her grow, first as a writer, then a producer and now an acclaimed director who’s helmed four episodes for my productions, has been a gift. I am honored to be her mentor and friend, am grateful she’ll be joining me to write and direct on ‘Hollywood,’ and am so excited to see what she creates at Netflix. Janet is a cultural force, and the world needs her stories.”
Mock’s new deal will provide more chances to spread the message, she says.Nick Adams, director of transgender media and representation at GLAAD says,
“For stories about transgender people to be truly real and authentic, trans people need to be behind the camera as well as in front of it. It is truly groundbreaking for Netflix to empower Janet Mock, a trans woman of color, to create and greenlight her own films and TV shows. We can’t wait to see the stories she’ll bring to the screen.”
Mock says,
“There was a major shift after I directed, from the network and the powers that be, who saw me as an artistic voice. I never saw myself as an artist, and when I was given the power to direct, I showed myself what I could do. That’s when everything changed.”
(Photo, screen grab; via Variety)
