Malala calls out Hollywood for industry's scarce Muslim representation

Activist and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has called out Hollywood, highlighting that the industry does not have enough Muslim representation and that Muslim actors only constitute one percent of the popular TV series leads. 

Malala made the statememt when she was at Variety's Power of Women event. "I learned that Asian people like me make up less than four per cent of leads in Hollywood films,” she said. “Muslims are 25 per cent of the population, but only one per cent of characters in popular TV series," Malala was quoted as saying by media reports. 

"I know that the executives have passed on dozens of quality, equally amazing projects because they thought that the characters or their creators were too young, too Brown, too foreign, too poor. Sometimes it feels like they’re saying we just don’t belong here,” she added.

Malala recently signed a collaboration with Apple TV. Her production banner Extracurricular has partnered with the indie studio A24 for an untitled feature documentary on the legendary Haenyeo society of fisherwomen who live on South Korea's Jeju Island. It will be directed by Sue Kim. 

Malala recently unveiled her first slate of film and TV projects for Apple TV+ through Extracurricular.The slate includes a feature based on Elaine Hsieh Chou's book Disorientation about a college student's revealing dissertation on a young poet. The production is also working on a series based on the New York Times best-selling novel Fifty Words of Rain by Asha Lemmie that revolves around a woman's search for acceptance in post-World War II Japan.