Julie Hébert started directing in Hollywood through a paid internship program for women and people of color. She remembers rampant sexism when she was starting out in the early 2000s: snide comments by white men that the women should’ve “stuck to their dollhouses.” Even as an established director, she recalls working with a team of white men who refused to do her shot or changed it for “the better” during lunch without asking her.
It took two decades of working in the industry, Hébert says, to experience a sexism-free set. She was in Vancouver getting ready for her last day directing an episode of “Man in the High Castle” and thought something felt “weird” about the shoot.
“Then I realized what it was: there was no sexism for the entire thing. There was no misogyny,” she recalls. “It was wonderful and amazing. It was also kind of startling to me that I had never experienced that before. There’s always somebody who’s resentful that you’re the female in charge.”
