Venom-star Riz Ahmed for more diversity in Hollywood

"Venom"-star Riz Ahmed's blockbuster success is giving him a bigger platform to continue his call for more representation in Hollywood.

Transcript

00:00Prominent successes can mask structural problems.

00:03Obama was in the White House and you still needed the Black Lives Matter movement.

00:18We're talking about representation, not diversity.

00:21What's at stake here is whether or not we will move forwards together

00:25or whether we will leave people behind.

00:31The Black Lives Matter Movement

00:36When you first start seeing gay characters in mainstream culture

00:39or black characters or Muslim characters,

00:42they can start off as a kind of stereotype.

00:44The cab driver, the shopkeeper.

00:50There's a lot of kind of terrorist number three stuff.

00:52I just made a decision I wasn't going to do it.

00:54I just thought I'd rather be broke.

00:56The Black Lives Matter Movement

01:05The power of stories to allow us to relate to experiences

01:08that don't resemble our own is phenomenal.

01:18See there's thousands of angry young men that are lost,

01:20sidelined in the economy, a marginal cost.

01:23Now, if we fail to represent people in our mainstream narratives,

01:29they'll switch off.

01:30They'll retreat to fringe narratives, to filter bubbles online

01:33and sometimes even off to Syria.

01:35What people are looking for is the message that they belong,

01:40that they're part of something,

01:43that they are seen and heard and that despite

01:46or perhaps because of the uniqueness of their experience,

01:49they are valued.

01:50They want to feel represented.

01:53They want to be heard.