Reese Witherspoon speaks on stage at Hello Sunshine's second annual Shine Away event at Nya Studios on Oct. 5 in Los Angeles.media company held its second annual Shine Away conference on Saturday, featuring plenty of face time with the star and her A-list friends.
Explaining that she had spent her first two decades in Hollywood just hustling and trying to get jobs, she said, “I didn’t have time to look at the bigger macro, like, what is our business? How are they making money? Wait, why are there no parts for women? Wait, why am I not seeing any people of color behind the scenes? Like, why am I not seeing any writers who are bringing a different perspective? And that’s what made me think.
Dern added that her relationships with her fellow actresses “are the greatest love stories, but they told us that we weren’t going to get along so better just to have one woman in the room.” Witherspoon explained how consumers and audiences can also support female creators, emphasizing, “When there’s a show on Netflix or whatever, just push the ‘like’ button — You don’t know how important that ‘like’ button is. Just ‘like it,’ because that actually affects the salaries of the women who made it. They run all that data… Even put it in your watch list, that little behavior” is valuable.