https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/magazine/elizabeth-banks-interview.html
One of my least favorite things to do in talking to people like you is to represent all women in Hollywood who are doing interesting things. I am in a rarefied category. There are very few female directors in Hollywood. There are even fewer who are actresses who have become directors. I’ve [expletive] worked my tail off to be able to do what I’m doing. I would love for you to interview the studio heads and the corporations and ask them these questions, because I can’t solve it. I’m putting my head down and showing these big corporations that if they give women the opportunity to do this job, they can make a good product that can make them a profit. It’s a male-dominated industry. It’s a male-dominated world. That’s what I’m up against, but I can’t solve it and I don’t really want to analyze it. It’s not interesting to me. It puts me, frankly, in a position where the studio head is going to read it in The New York Times and be like, “Wow, that Liz Banks has got a lot to say.” I don’t need that added pressure. I truly feel that it’s dangerous to talk about these things now...
....I’ve just been put in this position of my statements’ being perceived as being grand when they’re really just about my personal experience, which is all I should be talking about. I was told by a big producer of big action movies that I couldn’t direct action, that male actors were not going to follow me. He was flummoxed at the idea that a woman would be able to lead the Rock on a C.G.I. screen, I guess? That was said by someone with a lot of power in our industry to my face.