Geena Davis

Episode notes

(Photo: Monica Schipper / Getty Images)

Geena Davis is a genuine legend in show business: Beetlejuice, Thelma and Louise, A League of Their Own and many more. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Accidental Tourist.

For over two decades, The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has gathered data on representation of not just women but of all marginalized groups and how they’re being represented in entertainment media.

These days, she is starring in a couple of projects. You can catch her in the science fiction show The Boroughs on Netflix. She’s also starring in The Wrong Girls alongside Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat. That film is in theaters now.

Geena shares what her institute does with all their findings and some heartwarming stories about how her work has shaped the way her children think about TV and film. She also talks about gaining confidence in voicing her opinions on set and how quieting her inner-critic helped her to almost qualify as an archer for the Olympics.

A version of this interview originally aired in May of 2016.

In this episode...

Jesse Thorn

Host

Kevin Ferguson

Senior Producer

Jesus Ambrosio

Producer

Richard Robey

Maximum Fun Producer

Daniel Arón Speer

Video Editor

Hannah Moroz

Maximum Fun Production Fellow

Guests

Geena Davis

About the show

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

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