I always enjoy it when a celebrity or company is revealed to be trash through a specific incident and then other celebrities and famous people come forward, with receipts, to prove this. Such is the case with the Hallmark channel, which recently pulled some sweet ads for the company Zola featuring a lesbian couple getting married and kissing at the altar. As Kaiser reported, the company which protested this very benign ad was the group 1 Million Moms, which has all of 4,239 followers on Twitter. Hallmark caved to this not at all influential (not that it would make a difference) hate group. They eventually reinstated the ads, but only after a ton of backlash, calls for a boycott and Zola vowing to no longer advertise with them. Now Hilarie Burton, who stars in the very cute and actually diverse Lifetime movie A Christmas Wish (I watched it, Pam Grier has a major role and one of the lead character’s brothers has a husband and it’s treated as matter-of-fact), has some receipts about Hallmark. Here are her tweets, in order, about her sh-tty experience with them asking for more diversity and being completely shut down.
Just going through some old emails from a #Hallmark job I was “let go” from back in January. I had insisted on a LGBTQ character, an interracial couple and diverse casting. I was polite, direct and professional. But after the execs gave their notes on the script and NONE of my Requests were honored, I was told “take it or leave it”.
I left it. And the paycheck. Shitty being penalized for standing up for inclusivity. I really wanted that job. It was close to my house. It paid really well. It was about the military, which you all know I hold dear. But?
Id walk away again in a heartbeat. The bigotry comes from the top and permeates the whole deal over there. I’ve been loudly cheering for @lifetimetv all year because they heard my concerns + RALLIED! You want inclusive Christmas magic?! We got it.
Love is love🏳️🌈🎄💖 #receiptsKey point here: I have a wonderful husband @JDMorgan who works his ass off so I have the luxury to choose morals over paying bills. Not everyone has that! Nor should we be forced to be dependent. If I had to cover our mortgage and was told “take it or leave it”, I’d be f-ked.
Hilarie didn’t even plug her movie! Watch A Christmas Wish. They also make fun of romance movie tropes, like how cute meets can be annoying, and how the guys in romcoms can seem like stalkers.
Given the fact that Hilarie got fired, as a white woman, for asking about diversity, can you imagine what people of color go through? We just heard about Gabrielle Union’s experience with at America’s Got Talent with NBC. The Hallmark movies are SO WHITE and so straight. It’s very noticeable and I’m not surprised that Hilarie had this experience with them. Watch Lifetime movies! Seriously #BoycottHallmark, their movies are cardboard cutout of romances anyway.
Titles Featuring Lesbians Joyfully Existing And Also It’s Christmas Can We Just Let People Love Who They Love
🎥 Let It Snow
📺 Merry Happy Whatever pic.twitter.com/LTwnHogkoJ— Netflix US (@netflix) December 15, 2019
Guess I’m not getting hired to write my holiday movie, Jingle Belles: Lesbians At Competing Christmas Tree Farms Fall In Love.
— Emily Andras (@emtothea) December 14, 2019
photos credit: WENN and Avalon.red
I like her answers here. Showing that making a stand did cost her, for a job she wanted, but it’s not quite the same to walk away when you’re financially comfortable. People who manage to still stand up in those conditions are truly heroic. I too am tired of how samey those films are. It gets hard to tell them all apart.
Yes. Love that she did this.
Good for her! We white people have to stand up too if we want this sh*t fixed.
Yes you do! Because they don’t listen to us black folks.
That’s a huge part of racism. When black women stand up for diversity and against racism, nine times out of ten we’re seen as being “selfish” and “self serving” and “complaining” and dismissed. But when a white woman says the same exact thing, they’re often (not always, obviously, evidenced by this story) heard.
@Stepup no lies detected. They don’t listen to us and we are easily dismissed. We are made to believe that we don’t know what racism is and proceed to have it whitesplained to us.
More white people need to step up and call out this BS or it will never change.
I read stories like this and feel sucker-punched. The ‘white power’ hand signs cadets and midshipmen were making during the Army-Navy game this weekend just sickened me. How have we not gotten past this?
I get angry – then, it’s just heartbreaking.
Yeah, seriously. Racism is a problem with white people and white people are going to have to be the ones who fix it.
Yes!
It drives me nuts when white people who don’t understand how racism works think they know how to solve it better than the black people who do. Typically, they think solving racism involves giving money to black education and helping the poor…lol. Ahhh, no. That’s not how it works. Racism will end when white people, and some non-black minorities who traffic in “model minority” bullshit, shed their ingrained racist assumptions and beliefs about black people. We can’t do that; they gotta do that work. Wealthy black people still deal with racism. Educated black people still deal with racism. White culture and white people need to change for racism to end.
To be clear: I am NOT saying that black education isn’t important. Closing the wealth gap is also important. But “solving” racism is going to take a lot more than that. It involves true transformation in the white psyche.
Stepup- the heartbreak for me is knowing that this change is a generational thing. These cadets learned this from an older generation. Hopefully they imprint less of this shit on the next generation. Wish more people saw the impact of the little things they say and do.
The less we tolerate, the more we speak up, the less these things linger. It’s just sad that we can’t move forward more quickly.
@Charlie.
The problem is that most people are more racist then they realize. Until white people stop getting defensive about racism and can acknowledge their own implicit biases, nothing will change. How it is right now is likely the best it will ever get, because white people DO NOT want to look at themselves when it comes to this issue.
Yeah, and it isn’t just biases, it’s realizing and acknowledging all the ways we (white people) benefit from societal racism, even when we don’t consider ourselves “racist” people.
Anyway, this is a great example that Burton is setting. I’d like to think I would have done the same, but truthfully I’m not sure I would have had the same foresight or even strength. The more white people talk about this stuff, though, the more other white people will consider their own roles in the system and see the ways they can help make change happen. It’s good to see some practical examples of people doing the right thing, even when it isn’t the easy thing.
Putting these companies on blast is going to force them to change. Evolve or die is the requirement.
I’d like to add HGTV (or as I like to call them “Homogeneous TV) for lacking in the diversity department. “Oh look another show with another white couple renovating and selling homes.” 🙄
this woman proves once and again that she is the real deal.
I love that she has been privately and publicly insisting on diversity — AND acknowledges her privilege in being able to do so. I appreciate her calling them out.
I 100% want to see that Jingle Belles movie though.
I really loved her last statement, mentioning how lucky she is that she can afford to have morals and completely stand by them. These are the kinds of people who need to take a stand and help the rest of us who can’t afford those luxuries. And just the fact that she KNOWS she has that privilege? Big fan now.
I’ve loved her since One Tree Hill and love her even more now! I kind of wish she had brought this up earlier but I do understand that it’s getting more traction due to its relevance to the current backlash.
Good for her. I’ve really come to like her a lot, even though I wasn’t her biggest fan in the OTH days. She seems just really solid and genuine. Hopefully this will prove inspirational to others in her position.
Diversity is why I’ve given my time to Lifetime when it comes to holiday movies.
Almost half the Lifetime movies have at least one non-white person in a leading role. Hallmark still thinks only straight white people fall in love with like 1 for every 50 films aired being a segregated “Black romance movie” they toss in for token diversity.
EXACTLY. And when Hallmark does throw in some color it’s always the ‘sassy black best friend role’. My mom and I noticed that loooong ago on Hallmark.
I just came to this realization over the past couple of weeks. I don’t really love the typical Lifetime fare of normal movies (sensational, crazy stuff), but their Christmas fluff movies are so much more interesting and diverse than the Hallmark tripe.
This. Hallmark has made like two movies with all black casts and then a couple with one black person in some small role, so none of their movies actually look like the real world. The Lifetime ones are so much better from what I’ve seen this weekend. I’m so glad I know this now, thanks to Hallmark’s giant homophobic f*** up!
When women like her with fame and class on their side on top of sexual orientation and race can still be punished for addressing inequality, how much more important is it to support women addressing it without those things too? Just like with men addressing inequality without all those privileges. Awesome use of her platform.
Way to go, Hilarie! Standing up for diversity and inclusivity, AND acknowledging she’s in a position to turn stuff down.
I hope more white actors follow her lead here.
I love Hallmark movies, they’re so awful and cheesy but I love them. They’re my guilty pleasure. Some people watch reality tv, I watch Hallmark movies. I had no idea Lifetime was making diverse, inclusive Christmas movies until this whole commercial controversy. I’m sure there are other people like me who just discovered Lifetime Christmas movies existed and prefer them.
The first one I watched yesterday had multiple people of color and a gay couple. It was awesome! I hope one day Hallmark wakes up and gets with the times, but I’m sticking with Lifetime regardless.
@Kebbie – with you! Love awful and cheesy…as I don’t have TV I rely on Netflix and (very recently) Prime. I’m going to be looking around to see how I can enjoy Lifetime now. Growing up in Montreal, racial discrimination didn’t seem to be huge (that I, a child, noticed); everyone was divided by language (English-speaker here). My sister and I left a store one Christmas (I was about 17, she would have been 19) and 2 people threw rotten tomatoes and eggs at us because we didn’t speak french whilst shopping (1971). …. I left Quebec 2 years later (at 19) for west coast and my sister moved west a few years later. It’s taken far too many years for me to recognize my privilege and the lack of diversity in entertainment.
@Shirley — If you have an Amazon fire stick, there’s a Lifetime app. They have a combination of newer and older movies and TV shows.
I watch on the app through my fire stick, but I have a directv login. Do they allow people to view it without a subscription? You could also just hop around week long free trials with Hulu, slingtv, philo, etc. through the rest of the holiday season.
They aired a “love is love” commercial that showed two women kissing during the movie I was watching earlier (not Zola but some kind of anti-bigotry PSA), kind of made me tear up after this whole thing. I’m just glad I can get my schmaltzy movies from a more progressive channel.
Does the boycott include hallmark cards? I need to know so I can fully commit.
They’re owned by the same company, so I’d say yeah
Isn’t Hallmark owned by a super conservative fundamental Christian family? I did some digging because their white bread straight Xmas movies bored me and I thought I read how the channel basically caters to white middle America and makes it wholesome so the “entire family can enjoy” (aka white and straight with no sex). My mom got sick and tired of me constantly pointing out how whte and straight the Christmas movies were and so when the Kelly Rowland movie aired recently, she got all excited lol and wouldn’t stop talking my ear off about it.
The Kelly Rowland Christmas movie is actually Lifetime, not Hallmark lol
Lifetime is definitely the superior option.
Super likable! Up with Lifetime, I guess. Had no idea they made an effort to be diverse, b ut happy to support them now. 🙂
Racism won’t end if white people don’t participate, do the work and insist on change. Good to know there’s people like Hilary who stand for inclusion even putting their ass on the line!
Hilarie is a cool chick. This makes me proud to have never seen even a minute of a Hallmark movie, let alone a Hallmark Christmas Movie.
Lifetime will always reign supreme!!! Mother may I sleep with danger?!!! Epic! Good to know they believe in diversity
I had no idea who she was until I started following Jeffrey Dean Morgan on instagram. I still haven’t seen her acting in anything (that I know of). But I love her for this. And I love that she addressed that she is a lucky woman to be able to turn down jobs. She is also a lucky woman to be married to JDM. I find him so handsome. And they both love animals which is awesome too.