What if you could rewrite the story?
In Hollywood, it seems you can. Or at least, you can now.
Back in a post WW2 world, Tinseltown was king. Power dynamics were rife, prejudices were part and parcel, and budding stars would do whatever it took to make it.
Hollywood’s Golden Age spanned decades, but it was in the 50s and 60s that the industry truly flourished, creating stars so adored they could hardly leave their homes with careers so impressive they were barely there in the first place.
It’s this period that Ryan Murphy wants to explore in his latest series, HOLLYWOOD – a love letter to Tinseltown.
The American Horror Story and Glee creator has joined forces with Scream Queens’ own Ian Brennan to create a new limited series all about Hollywood’s gilded curtain, its blatant discrimination against people of colour and members of the gay community, and where we might be now if diversity had been permitted to flourish.
Executive producer Janet Mock says that the re-telling of Hollywood’s story is even more crucial now in the confusing times we currently live in.
“With the present so fraught and the future uncertain, we turned to the past for direction, uncovering buried history to spin an aspirational tale of what ifs,” she says.
“What if a band of outsiders were given a chance to tell their own story? What if the person with greenlight power was a woman? The screenwriter a black man? What if the heroine was a woman of color? The matinee idol openly gay?
“And what if they were all invited into the room where the decisions are made, entering fully and unapologetically themselves to leave victorious and vaunted, their place in history cemented.
“HOLLYWOOD is a love letter to our little industry town where dreamers dwell, stars are born, and magic transcends reality.”
Sounds glorious, tbh.
HOLLYWOOD will be streaming on Netflix from May 1.
You can check out the trailer in full here: