Why Anna Faris Wants To Host A Monthly Brunch At Her Home
Anna Faris wants to start up a brunch club. But if you’re looking for an invite, you might be out of luck, unless you are a Hollywood actress. Faris has an agenda: she wants to build a community of women forging a career in acting.
Faris told a Hollywood Reporter roundtable that her husband, Jurassic World actor Chris Pratt, has friends in the business who support each other. But Faris only sees other actresses at publicity functions. In an industry where roles for women are scarce, actresses are more often than not in competition with one another.
It’s an environment Faris would like to change. She thinks starting off with some social time might be part of the answer.
“Chris [Pratt, Faris’ husband] is buddies with all these actors. They’ll do each other favors, they’ll go to each other’s table reads. And the only times I see actress acquaintances of mine is at events. We don’t have a sense of community because we don’t get to work with each other often. So I want to start a monthly brunch at my house. No agenda, just actresses hanging out and getting to know each other. Because we don’t get that. Instead it’s a feeling of being pitted against one another.”
The Mom star said actresses must create their own work. According to Faris, only one out of every three or four roles in Hollywood is for women.
A recent skit from Inside Amy Schumer featured a group of actresses — Patricia Arquette, Tina Fey, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus — celebrating Julia’s last day as a “desirable” woman in the industry. At one point in the skit, the actresses discover they all tried out for the same part, which eventually went to Jennifer Lopez.
Arquette also participated in the Hollywood Reporter roundtable. She agreed quality roles for women are few and far between — so much so she has even suggested some characters change genders.
“I would say to my agent, ‘Well, are there any good parts in that?’ ‘Well, not for women.’ I would say, ‘Are there any good parts for men?’ ‘Oh well, yeah.’ I was like, ‘Well can that character be a woman? Can you call them and ask, ‘Can that character be a woman?” I would do that all the time. It never worked.”
When asked by The Wrap what new category she would add to the Emmys, Faris said she would eliminate gender distinctions. She called them “arbitrary,” and asked, “Why not just have ‘Best Performance in a Tuxedo?'”
[Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Entertainment]
