Hillman Grad Founders Lena Waithe And Rishi Rajani Walk The Walk To Make Inclusion A Reality: “We Have An Incredible Success Rate With First-Time Filmmakers”
19.05.2024 - 13:59
/ deadline.com
Reflecting on her career, Lena Waithe says, “I think about legacy a lot.” The writer-producer-actor, whose body of work includes creating Showtime drama The Chi and BET’s Twenties, has been on a steady upward trajectory since winning a primetime Emmy Award in 2017 for outstanding writing on Netflix’s Master of None. But for Waithe, success raised questions about where she was headed. “I didn’t know what I was actually trying to build. I wanted to have real agency over my career, but it was also not just about me, it’s about who I can work with.”
Together with Rishi Rajani, a studio exec who honed his skills at 20th Century Fox, UTA, Paradigm, and Studio 8, Waithe has created a multi-platform entertainment company that accomplishes both. At Hillman Grad Productions, Waithe and Rishi develop projects that often go against the industry grain, while also hiring up-and-coming talent from BIPOC and other marginalized communities that they can shepherd from obscurity to success.
Hillman Grad started from a place of defiance of a system that favors IP over originality. “Lena had been told ‘no’, on projects that she wanted to get off the ground, things that people didn’t believe in because of the marketplace,” says Rajani, who joined as CEO in 2018. “What I appreciated was that Lena wasn’t coming from a standpoint of, ‘How do we as a company make ourselves more marketable or appeal to the market?’ Lena has the experience of believing in a vision enough to make it happen.”
His excitement was compounded by an ability to nurture talent on the cusp of their big break. “Coming from the studio system, if someone had a great short film or even a great first feature, it was like, ‘That’s someone to keep an eye on.’ We ignore that,”
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