With a respected body of work, an Oscar, and now a prominent spot within the Marvel Cinematic Universe under her belt, Brie Larson’s one of the biggest names in Hollywood right now. And she wants to use her position to help make the industry a more diverse, inclusive space.
In a profile for InStyle with Marvel editor Sana Amanat, Larson spoke candidly about how, as different and new a project like Captain Marvel is for her career, she sees it as being part of her larger goal of using filmmaking to champion progressive, empowering messages to audiences:
“[Carol] didn’t apologise for herself. I felt like that was a really valuable trait, because she is incredibly flawed and makes a lot of mistakes … and has to ask to atone for them, and that is super valuable. She’s not ever shrinking herself down.
The movie was the biggest and best opportunity I could have ever asked for. It was, like, my superpower. This could be my form of activism: doing a film that can play all over the world and be in more places than I can be physically.”
But Larson has plans to use her star power to push for change in Hollywood in much more direct ways, as well. As part of the current Captain Marvel press tour, Larson’s made a point of drawing attention to the numerous women involved behind the scenes on the film. And in the long term, she wants to establish a vocational school specifically designed to get people into filmmaking:
“My next goal is to start a school to train people in various jobs. There are so many great jobs. You like the weird alien blasters? You could be the one who makes them. We need young people to carry on this tradition in moviemaking, and it would be so great if we had more diversity coming in through that.”
It’s easy to write off the larger cultural impact movies like Captain Marvel can have — because it’s often difficult to conceptualize and quantify how the impact actually manifests. A kid sees a movie like when they’re five and 20 years later, they’ve graduated film school with a project that will premiere at Sundance. Or perhaps they got into costume design. Or film writing.
There are a number of possibilities, and they’re all important. But concrete initiatives (like inclusion riders and scholarships) that are crafted to help better the chances of those potentialities becoming realities are just as crucial, and it’s great to see a powerful celebrity like Larson pushing for them.