Why So Many Actresses Are Becoming TV Series Executive Producers

There’s no shortage of female-oriented TV series in primetime television, but an increasing number of actresses who star in TV series are starting to take more creative control in their shows by becoming executive producers.

Women’s Media Center’s annual Gender & Non-Acting Primetime Emmy Nominations reports from the past few years have consistently shown that primetime TV shows that are centered on women, have female showrunners, and have leading actresses as executive producers tend to hire more women in male-dominated, non-acting jobs, such as directing, producing, writing, and editing. More women being hired in these jobs means that more women can be eligible for awards, such as the Primetime Emmys.

For the 2022-2023 TV season (June 2022 to May 2023), several actresses have taken on the leadership position of being an executive producer for new primetime TV series in which they have a starring role. They include:

• Emily Blunt of Prime Video’s limited drama series The English
• Rose Byrne of Apple TV+'s comedy series Platonic
• Rebecca Ferguson of Apple TV+’s drama series Silo
• Jennifer Garner of Apple TV+’s limited drama series The Last Thing He Told Me
• Kathryn Hahn of Hulu’s limited drama series Tiny Beautiful Things
• Sharon Horgan of Apple TV+’s comedy series Bad Sisters
• Abbi Jacobson of Prime Video’s comedy/drama series A League of Their Own
• Eva Longoria of CNN’s nonfiction series Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico
• Natasha Lyonne of Peacock’s drama series Poker Face
• Niecy Nash-Betts of ABC’s drama series The Rookie: Feds
• Keri Russell of Netflix’s drama series The Diplomat
• Zoë Saldaña of Netflix’s limited drama series From Scratch
• Kerry Washington of Hulu’s comedy series UnPrisoned
• Rachel Weisz of Prime Video’s limited drama series Dead Ringers
• Ali Wong of Netflix’s limited comedy/drama series Beef

Many of these shows are being campaigned for as Primetime Emmy contenders. But the possibility of getting nominated for a major award represents only part of the often-competitive process of getting a TV series made. Production companies sometimes get into bidding wars to get an original series produced or to acquire the rights to turn a book, movie, or other preexisting project into a TV series. And then there’s the battle for the series to get on a network or a streaming service. It’s also highly competitive to get jobs in front of and behind the camera for these TV series.

Former Desperate Housewives co-star Longoria explained in an interview with Town & Country why she became a TV executive producer and a movie director: “As an actor, you really don’t have any power over anything. You stand on a mark. You say your line. You go home. You don’t cast who’s opposite you. You don’t get to pick the take you liked best or the poster. I want to control the final product of anything I do.”

At an April 2023 public Q&A for The Last Thing He Told Me that was hosted by the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Garner admitted she wasn’t the first choice to get the starring role. In the series (which is based on Laura Dave’s bestselling 2021 novel of the same name), Garner portrays a wood crafter named Hannah Michaels, who goes on a harrowing journey with her 16-year-old stepdaughter Bailey Michaels (played by Angourie Rice) to find out what happened to Hannah’s husband/Bailey’s father, Owen Michaels (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a technology executive who suddenly disappeared.

Garner said at the Q&A that she was a big fan of the book, even before there were plans for a TV series. “When I had heard that the actress [who was originally cast for] playing Hannah had fallen out due to scheduling issues,” Garner commented, “I thought, ‘If my peers find out, I don’t have a shot. I’m just going to go right for it.’ And that’s what I did.”

The Last Thing He Told Me author Dave — who is a co-creator, executive producer, and writer for the series — said at the Q&A that she was convinced that Garner was the right actress for the role after Dave read a heartfelt letter from Garner. “When Jen wrote this letter that I got to see at the beginning,” Dave remembered, “she talked about several things that let me know how much she understood Hannah. And I knew what she was going to bring to [the character of] Hannah.”

Garner said a big reason why she wanted to be involved with The Last Thing He Told Me as an executive producer was because Hello Sunshine (co-founded by award-winning actress/producer Reese Witherspoon) was one of the production companies behind the series. “You cannot even imagine how huge it is to have a company run by women for women,” Garner commented.

Hello Sunshine’s other projects include the Emmy-nominated 2020 limited drama series Little Fires Everywhere; the Apple TV+ drama series The Morning Show (an Emmy winner) and Truth Be Told; the 2022 drama film Where the Crawdads Sing; Prime Video’s 2023 limited drama series Daisy Jones & the Six; and the aforementioned From Scratch and Tiny Beautiful Things. Hello Sunshine’s production company subsidiary Pacific Standard was one of the companies behind the Emmy-winning HBO series Big Little Lies, as well as two Oscar-nominated 2014 films: Gone Girl and Wild.

Hello Sunshine president of film and television Lauren Neustadter said at The Last Thing He Told Me Q&A that because many of the actresses who work with the company are mothers of young children, Hello Sunshine likes to choose filming locations that are close to the actresses’ homes. “At Hello Sunshine, we’re always trying to anchor stories around incredible actresses. And in a lot of cases, those incredible actresses want to be with their kids,” Neustadter explained. For example, even though the story of The Last Thing He Told Me does not take place in the Los Angeles area, most of the series’ interior scenes were filmed in the Los Angeles area.

Being a female star and an executive producer for a TV series isn’t just about having an additional title in the show’s credits. It’s about being able to have more power and influence over the narrative of how people are portrayed on television and who gets hired behind the scenes. Five of the six executive producers for The Last Thing He Told Me are women: Garner, Dave, Neustadter, Witherspoon, and Merri Howard. They were chief decision makers in hiring several women to be directors, editors, and writers for the series. The Last Thing He Told Me has an all-female team of directors: Olivia Newman, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Lila Neugebauer, and Daisy Von Scherler Mayer. Four out of the seven (57%) writers for the series are women: Dave, Jamie Rosengard, Erica Tavera, and Allegra Caldera. Tamara Meem is an editor for the series, in an industry where many TV series have no female editors.

The Rookie: Feds star Nash-Betts has broken barriers by being a star/executive producer of one of the few broadcast TV series centered on a Black female character who’s a law enforcement official. In The Rookie: Feds (a spinoff of ABC’s The Rookie), which debuted in September 2022, Nash-Betts portrays Simone Clark, who graduated from the FBI Academy as the oldest person in her class.

In an interview with The Root, Nash said, “It feels like a gift to be able to play Simone because her Black Girl Magic is off the chain.” Nash-Betts added, “It is such a blessing to be able to taste all these disciplines. I started in comedy, and when I wanted to move into drama, I was told I had a lane and needed to stay in it. But I was like, ‘People who can make you laugh, can make you cry. Let me show you.’ And this is a long time for me to prove that I can be able to thread the needle and I could master both.”

The Rookie: Feds has several women in above-the-line, non-acting positions, including having a woman as a director and/or writer in almost every episode of the series. This type of female representation is rare for a broadcast TV series about law enforcement officers. Nash-Betts is also one of the few Black actresses who has the title of executive producer for a current TV series on a broadcast TV network. Cable TV and streaming services seem to have more opportunities for women of color actresses to become executive producers of series in which the actresses have starring roles.

Neustadter commented that it’s an accomplishment for women in television to work on great stories, but it’s just as rewarding to find the right collaborators: “At Hello Sunshine, every story has a woman at the center of it. And in an unconventional way, we want to showcase her as the hero of her own story. …Beyond that, we are always looking for women with agency.”