A guide to being a minor­i­ty in the film industry

Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste is the tal­ent­ed RADA-trained black actress who burst onto the British film scene in 1996 as Hort­ense in Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies. She moved to Los Ange­les sev­er­al years lat­er but has been back in the UK in the last cou­ple years for the­atre and tele­vi­sion work.

Simon Hat­ten­stone inter­viewed her on June 15 in the Guardian – the hook being her upcom­ing role in the deb­bie tuck­er green play, hang – but he chose to focus on why she left the British film scene at the peak of her pow­ers. He traced her immi­gra­tion back to 1997 when she spoke out in a Guardian inter­view with Dan Gleis­ter say­ing ​“The old men run­ning the indus­try just have not got a clue.”

Oppor­tu­ni­ties did not come her way after that. Fun­ny that. Hat­ten­stone spends most of the inter­view try­ing to get Jean-Bap­tiste to drop the r‑bomb. But she won’t. She has learnt to play the game.

Per­haps, like MJB in the ​’90s, you are a minor­i­ty in the film indus­try con­sid­er­ing being hon­est and speak­ing from the heart when plat­forms present? Con­sid­er­ing that art is sup­posed to hold a mir­ror to soci­ety, it scans like a legit choice to pur­sue this in all aspects of your life. This would be a major gaffe. 18 years may have passed since what hap­pened to Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste, but it appears that there hasn’t been a rev­o­lu­tion. With this in mind, we have a com­posed a handy guide on how to not let your god-giv­en iden­ti­ty offend the pow­er-bro­kers of the film industry.

1. Be vocal­ly grate­ful for all oppor­tu­ni­ties – no mat­ter how brief or inconsequential.

2. The cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers are a sen­si­tive breed. Pan­der relent­less­ly to their del­i­cate snowflake feelings.

3. Sil­ly! No one is racist or sex­ist or homo­pho­bic any more. That went out with flared trousers.

4. If you start to feel vic­timised, remem­ber that vic­tims are such a buzzkill.

5. Anger is unseem­ly, espe­cial­ly from the low­er orders. Inter­nalise, inter­nalise, internalise.

6. If you start to feel like you will explode from all the not speak­ing out, take up drink­ing or ther­a­py or mak­ing low-bud­get films that no one will see.

7. The only thing you should not take up is blam­ing film indus­try bods, who are uni­form­ly love­ly and over­worked enough as it is.

8. Learn the lan­guage of satire. The indus­try will tol­er­ate neg­a­tive com­ment if it can be pack­aged and sold as ​‘irrev­er­ent entertainment’.

9. Reach out to those in a sim­i­lar boat but if an alliance is born don’t let that go to your head. You must still play nice­ly and polite­ly with the always delight­ful industry.

10. Be bet­ter than your oppres­sors but no need to let them know it.