I can only assume Kathleen has fallen down a well and is incapacitated at the moment because Lainey assigned me a Michael B. Jordan story in which her Forever Bae MBJ is being the MOST BAE. Remember Frances McDormand’s Oscar speech in which she shouted out inclusion riders and everyone was like, huh? And then we all learned about the equity initiative outlined by Stacy Smith, PhD, in The Hollywood Reporter a few years ago. In short, it’s a clause meant for A-listers to insert into their contracts, ensuring onscreen demographics match the real world’s demographic distribution. The first on-the-record adopter of the inclusion rider? Michael B. Jordan, aka MOST BAE Jordan.
Jordan has a production company, Outlier Society, because he’s driven and smart and any actor with ambition should start their own company (see also: Margot Robbie), as a development farm if nothing else. In an Instagram post, Jordan pledged to add an inclusion rider to the projects produced by Outlier Society. That is not a small commitment. Currently Outlier Society has two projects listed, but Jordan is only just hitting his stride as a star. Even though Black Panther is a tremendous success and Killmonger is an instantly iconic role, Jordan hasn’t peaked yet. With the kind of clout he’s gaining, can you imagine how busy his production company could get? In a few years, we could easily talk about MBJ the way we do Mark Wahlberg—except we actually like MBJ.
It’s not a small thing for someone like MBJ to commit to the inclusion rider. He’s just at the start of his producing career, so this will be the way his company operates, essentially, from the beginning. This is what will define him as a producer, that at the start, he pledged to use his power to promote an inclusive hiring process and equality on set. And since he is so publicly on the record supporting the initiative, it raises the bar for other actor-producers to follow his example. Frances McDormand threw down a challenge, and Michael B. Jordan was the first to pick it up. Now the question is, who’s next?
