One-on-One with Jessica Chastain

The content itself is engaging—the movie is based on poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman’s account of the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Jan and Antonina Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion—but it’s the on-set girl power that is of the utmost importance to the actress, even leading her to pen an essay on the topic for The Hollywood Reporter last year.

“It was the first time I had been on set with so many women,”she notes, referencing director Niki Caro, producers Diane Levin, Kim Zubick and Katie McNeill, screenwriter Angela Workman and Ackerman, among others, expressing that she felt appreciated and valued working among so many females in a way that male-dominated sets just can’t provide. “If you’re one of the only women on a set—if it’s you and a bunch of men—you feel like your value doesn’t come from your thoughts and your talent and what you say: your value comes from how you look and how you’re perceived by the men around you.”

Chastain is quick to hasten that she isn’t an extremist: she isn’t suggesting that Hollywood create an all-female film set, just that a little gender equality might be in order. “I’m not saying that you should have a film set where it’s predominantly women, I’m just saying when you have more women and you have more balance in a situation, it’s going to be a healthier experience,” she notes, referencing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent speech at Georgetown University about being one of only a few women on the Supreme Court. The latter said, “People ask me sometimes, when— when do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.”

Female empowerment in entertainment is so important to Chastain that she has teamed up with Freida Pinto, Queen Latifah, Catherine Hardwicke and Juliette Binoche on We Do It Together, a non-profit that aims to create more opportunities for women in TV and film.

“I’ve always been interested in creating diversity in cinema,” she says of her decision to join the advisory board of WDIT. “I started a production company—all female led, actually, called Freckle Films. We Do It Together contacted me a while ago and asked if I would be on the board of advisors, and I said absolutely because I think it’s an incredible non-profit organization.”

It’s her way, along with her essay, of making a difference. “The more that people communicate about the problems that we have, the better it’s going to be. That’s how change happens; you can feel it percolating,” she says. “You look at the Best Picture nominees from last year, and there was not one that had a female protagonist. That is so upsetting to me, because that means that every picture that they deemed worthy of a nomination was from a male point of view. This year, there are four of the seven that have female protagonists.”

She allows, “I do think that the industry itself wants to change— we want diversity—and I think it had just gotten stagnant. I think the more that we shake it up, it will make a difference. I’m starting to see it.”