Someone who's been a showrunner commented on things the production could have done for season 1 and should be doing for season 2 and, phew. This just sounds so thoughtful and like what everyone should be doing and I feel like Jacob and Brendan probably aren't doing much (if any) of it
This is by perdroparo2 on Threads:
Most of our actors were some kind of marginalized. Part of their on-boarding process was sitting down with them individually & as a team to explicitly discuss what our game plan was in the likely scenario of unhinged harrassment once the show dropped.
We discussed what our internal process would be for reporting & dealing with harrassment. We also discussed what our public-facing response to harrassment would be, with the actors' input.
I also sat down with them individually to talk through what supports they would want in that situation. What we ultimately wound up going with was
A no-fault system where they could temporarily suspend their marketing & publicity agreements without financial or contract nullification liability (ie, avoid the internet and public for a while).
We also provided professional mental health supports with an on-call clinician in the case of distress and provided a system (with optional anonymity) for reporting and documenting harrassment to a third party, and there was a math formula I did not understand 😂
...essentially upping the % of waterfall pay they'd receive if they proved (with documentation from that third party) that working on this project was causing them harm.
In short: We had a PLAN. We had supports in place that we'd all discussed together & agreed upon. We knew certain topics and actors having certain identities were likely going to prompt more abuse, and we made sure that they knew they were supported and that our team had 0 tolerance for it both privately & publically.
We didn't just hire actors who we knew were going to get abused by a bunch of unhinged weirdos and say "welp, that's what you signed on for, a paycheck's a paycheck! Also, I'm not even going to publically condemn what's happening."
If I can do this for my stupid little comedy show as a first time show runner, a seasoned show runner trying to make something serious and "for the culture" has no excuse.
I always knew they could do more but I had no idea how much more they could do and how fucking easy it would have been oh my god. Unreal.
