When Jenai Davis gave up her job as a middle school art teacher in her hometown of Washington, D.C., to make her way in Hollywood as a set designer, she never could’ve imagined her first job would be inside the White House — albeit one 3,000 miles away from home. Yet here she is one early April afternoon inside a replica of the executive mansion constructed on a studio lot in Los Angeles for The Residence, Shondaland’s forthcoming comedic murder mystery for Netflix that takes place inside the place where presidents reside.

Davis’ job today is simple but important: She’s methodically applying paste to wallpaper that’ll be hung on the walls to help create the illusion that this set really is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sawdust rains down around her; sounds of buzz saws fill the cavernous space. Amid the crew of guys moving wood planks and measuring things as they construct the West Wing, Davis presents a notable, glaring contrast: All of them are white — mostly burly, bearded, and tattooed carpenter-looking dudes — and she is the only Black person among the roughly two dozen people on the set, and one of only three women.

“I’m thankful I’m starting here,” she says. “I would like to be the boss one day so I can hire more people who look like me.”

A rung in the ladder for change

That sentiment is, as it happens, exactly how she got here. Davis is a participant in the Ladder program, one of two initiatives Shondaland created in partnership with Netflix to increase inclusion behind the camera.

After years of consciousness-raising and gains by creators, inclusion of minorities and people of color is improving among show leads, casts, and even writers. But with the Ladder program and its sister program, the Producers Inclusion Initiative, Shondaland has created pipelines to add more people from under-represented backgrounds to the parts of the industry we don’t see: designers, lighting and sound specialists, location scouts, and the craft services people who keep sets clean and stocked with snacks. While the Producers Inclusion Initiative is a nine-week virtual immersive course solely for up-and-coming line producers, the Ladder program is a hands-on, on-set, real-time learning lab. Both programs provide participants with the training, skills, and experience they need to land jobs, and upon completion, they get considered for positions on Shondaland and Netflix shows. But these programs are bigger than jobs: They’re changing lives and the industry as a whole.

“I don’t have the words for how grateful I am,” says Mahogany Caldwell, a Ladder participant now working in craft services. After graduating from college in 2018, she worked as a custodian on a studio lot, so keen to work in Hollywood she figured she’d take any job and work her way up to a job on set. That never panned out, and she says the hostility and bias became so intense, her mental health suffered. “I was literally crying as I was working,” she says. “I felt like I didn’t matter, and I was only good enough to clean the toilets.” Now, Caldwell says, “I’ll be on set for 12 hours, my feet on fire, I’m in the rain, and I’m still excited and grateful. I’m not invisible. I’ve been brought to the front.”

Shattering the barriers that stand in the way of progress

Bridgerton is known for breaking barriers. But there was a time when the behind-the-scenes optics of Shondaland’s massive Netflix hit, which was filmed entirely in the United Kingdom, hadn’t caught up to the inclusiveness on-screen. Sherise Blackman, who served as a writers’ assistant on season two of the series and then became the Ladder program supervisor, says that when people from the U.S. come to the U.K. — home to an almost $8 billion TV and film industry — to film shows, they’re often startled when they see crews. “They look around and go, ‘Oh! It’s white.’ It’s the first thing that hits you.” One 2022 study found the U.K.’s film and TV industry to be “rife” with racism, and representation of Black, Asian, and other minority groups behind the scenes is consistently lower than that of the U.K. workforce.

Sara Fischer, Executive Vice President and Head of Production at Shondaland, took notice; she couldn’t not notice. “It was almost an entirely white male crew, except for the areas you’d expect women,” she says. “But even hair and makeup was white and female. Everybody.” Fischer, who’s white, asked for an explanation from the line producer. “She said, ‘Steve McQueen is shooting a movie, and that’s where the Black crew is.’ I went to Shonda, and I said, ‘We’ve got to change this.’”

Why these programs are so radical: Everybody remembers the old days

Although she’s not a person of color, Fischer knows the sting of discrimination, both as a Jewish person and as a woman who began working on all-male sets in the ’80s. Back then, there were no HR departments or social media platforms to even share information anonymously. “There was no avenue to talk to,” she says. “And you didn’t want to be a troublemaker. So, if they heard you were an issue, they wouldn’t hire you.”

Once, she returned to work on a show where she’d worked previously, only this time she was pregnant. “The production manager told me I’d be fired if he caught me sitting down,” she says. “The grips set up a system of apple boxes so I could be leaning and then stand up, because I don’t want to lose my job. But there was no way to complain. There was no one to go to.” Sets look a lot different today — especially when women are in charge, and especially when Shonda Rhimes is in charge. Fischer recalls the time she mentioned to Rhimes in passing it would be nice to have space for nursing moms on set; later, thinking Rhimes had forgotten about it, Fischer was pleasantly surprised when Rhimes took her on a tour of the Shondaland offices and saw the space for nursing mothers. “You hire women; she’s gonna hire more women. … We’re calmer, especially moms, and we can multitask. If you hire the department head of color, they’re gonna hire people of color,” she says.

How the Ladder program started

The Ladder program began in earnest during production of season two of Bridgerton, but a small seed had actually been planted during production for season one when Black cast members expressed frustration with the hairstyling — an issue Black actors continue to say they experience with on-set stylists who don’t know how to do Black hair. In response, Fischer and the team started a barbering course. By season two, seeing needs across other departments, Fischer and company started a pilot version of the Ladder program, which had a small group roving between various departments to make the set more inclusive all around. By the time production for Queen Charlotte, the Bridgerton prequel series that tells the story of the young queen as she enters the royal court of England, began in early 2022, the Ladder program had become a polished machine.

Fischer tapped Blackman to supervise the Ladder program, which in a way is revolutionary. It’s not uncommon for diversity and inclusion programs to be helmed by white officials who, purposefully or not, sideline the very voices inclusion programs were meant to empower. “Sara has been a godsend,” Blackman says. “To have somebody of her stature standing by to say, ‘I trust Sherise. I trust what she’s saying is correct,’ that is so rare. It worked because somebody trusted what a Black person was saying.”

One of the first changes Blackman helped initiate was making it so that Ladder program participants stayed in their roles through the entire production — typically seven or eight months — instead of rotating from one department to the next. This way, people get actual training instead of, as she puts it, “just being a Black face on set.” She also advised the Ladder program to provide equipment and even transportation; now, a minivan can pick up participants from a station in London and bring them to Bridgerton sets, often far away from the urban center. “These are the things that stop people from certain socioeconomic backgrounds from being able to get these jobs,” Blackman says.

Perhaps most crucially, Blackman got the word out. Traditionally, people who work on TV sets know about jobs through their network, and often from family connections; a great many people become, say, prop experts or lighting techs because their father or brother was one. Blackman spread word among her networks that a training program was opening up, and she was flooded with responses. “I saw 100 people for 15 spots. But all the people I saw were saying, ‘Even if I don’t get this, I’m just happy to know this thing is happening. I’m just grateful.’”

None of this could’ve happened without the support of Netflix. “Our team’s focus is increasing representation on our productions across the board,” says Tiffany Burrell-Lewis, Director of Creative Talent Development at Netflix, who championed support for the programs. Exactly how much they cost Netflix is undisclosed, but they’re funded partially by a $100 million commitment the streamer made in 2021 to help people from under-represented groups get jobs in TV and film. “This was completely on point in terms of what we were trying to do,” she says. “You have to be very intentional about changing the landscape in the way Shondaland is doing it.”

What happens when people who want opportunities get them

Roger Russell, a trainee in the camera department of the Ladder program, had a thriving career directing music videos for artists including Tinie Tempah, Stefflon Don, and others for more than 15 years, but he quietly longed to move into scripted TV and film for years. For many working adults, “second act” career shifts can be daunting; unlike people in their 20s, people over 40 with mortgages and, as in Russell’s case, children to feed aren’t able to share a small apartment with roommates while working entry-level jobs to put them on track for bigger jobs down the road.

Even for experienced people like Russell, simply being at a certain life stage can put creative aspirations on hold indefinitely. “When you start the journey applying for those jobs, the first responses are ‘What’s he done?’ So, you get into that chicken-and-egg situation,” he says. “It’s not that you can’t do the job; it’s just that you haven’t done the job enough to warrant them giving you that opportunity. It’s not like I was starting from scratch. I did have a set of skills and experience. I just needed to see how it was done at this level.”

He got into the Ladder program for season three of Bridgerton, happily signing on as a trainee. (Says Blackman, “He told me, ‘I am willing to go back to cleaning cameras.’ That’s how much he wanted this.”) Shadowing Alicia Robbins, who previously was director of photography on Grey’s Anatomy episodes and shot four episodes of season three of Bridgerton, Russell was given an opportunity to light and shoot scenes as Robbins monitored. “It felt like she was invested in me,” he says. “It would have been easy for her to say, ‘I’ve got a job to do here. I’m busy, sorry.’ But she always had time for me. I felt part of the team. Everyone was happy.” Russell has since shot a project for Amazon and worked on a documentary for an American R&B singer. Calls keep coming. “It changed my perspective on what’s possible for me to do, that I can do it with confidence,” he says. “And the opportunity would never have come about had it not been for this program.” And Russell is not an anomaly: Blackman says roughly 60 percent of participants move up a level during training because, as she says, “They’re that good.”

Coming to work on a more inclusive set benefits actors too. India Amarteifio, who plays young Queen Charlotte, told Fischer she’d never seen anyone on a set who looked like her before; Golda Rosheuvel, who portrays the older queen in both Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton, noted how significant the changes are too. “It’s great because we have the voices in the room,” Rosheuvel tells Shondaland. “Not only as in Shonda Rhimes, but together working, making it, making the product. Everybody has a voice if they are there.”

Shondaland’s agents of change

Here in the United States, the Ladder program looks and functions differently. As pretty much everyone knows now, thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike that’s paused virtually every scripted TV show in the United States, the U.S. television industry runs thanks to the efforts of people in unions — powerful organizations that wield tight control over every aspect of creation, from writing to all areas of production. Of course, unions exist to represent workers and lobby on workers’ behalf, but they enforce strict rules about who can do what work on a set. It’s nearly impossible to get a job on a Hollywood set without belonging to a union, and broadly speaking, you can’t join a union until you’ve amassed a certain number of days first, and then pay a (sometimes sizable) fee to join. This structure can present another mountain for under-represented groups to climb before they can break into Hollywood. There aren’t many people in Hollywood who can shrink a mountain of this size down to a molehill, but one of them is Shonda Rhimes.

“It’s been really important to me that we make a path for other people,” Rhimes said in a recent symposium on inclusion hosted by Netflix. “You look around the set, and it’s great to have a Black director or writer and Black actors … but then the entire crew doesn’t reflect America or the world. So for me, it’s been important to create things like the Ladder program to train people to get those jobs behind the scenes.” Rhimes was adamant, Fischer says, that participants be paid a livable wage while they work; upon completion of the Ladder program, trainees have experience and the required hours they need to apply for appropriate unions.

A handful of people at Shondaland, including Fischer, Shondaland President and COO Megha Tolia, Production Coordinator Eboni Price, Chief People and Culture Officer Carolyn Mathis, and on the Netflix side, Film Production Executive Noelle Green and Burrell-Lewis, got the Ladder program up and running by joining forces to make the program work. “The Ladder program opens doors that haven’t existed before and encourages the unions to collaborate on the inclusion effort,” says Green, who worked alongside Fischer closely to shepherd the program to completion. “There are no obvious pathways to get into the union for under-represented communities trying to break into the entertainment industry. This is a huge breakthrough and will help change the landscape permanently.”

Bringing the Ladder to fruition was no easy feat; doing so meant negotiating with unions to get trainees on set and getting money to fund it, but the group — all women — got it done.

“I realized we could change it,” Fischer says. “I didn’t do it by myself, and I knew it was going to be difficult. But I hear Shonda in my head. She says, ‘Don’t ask. Tell them what you’re going to do.’ And I just do it.”

How the Producers Inclusion Initiative started

When Fischer was looking to hire a Black woman line producer as Station 19 was beginning seven years ago, she couldn’t seem to find any. For her and Rhimes, frustration turned into an imperative: If we can’t find them, we’ll make them. Thus, the seeds of the Producers Inclusion Initiative were planted. The program, in collaboration with Netflix, is a more intermediate-level course that trains people from historically under-represented communities who already have some producing experience to cross the threshold, so to speak, in becoming line producers, production managers, and assistant directors. Through the PII, attendees access virtual workshops where department heads and industry leaders like Rhimes, Debbie Allen, Mara Brock Akil, Preston Holmes, and others share their knowledge and expertise. Graduates have a direct relationship with executives at Netflix, Shondaland, and other industry leaders that gives them access to potential jobs or other career development opportunities. Because it’s virtual, eligible participants come from all over the country; after completion, nearly all of them get agents or are signed by top-tier management firms. Two got jobs on The Residence.

By the time of this writing, a combined 55 people have filtered through the two programs. As Fischer noted, that not only means that 55 lives have been impacted but also countless more as each of them climb the ladder and in turn hire or mentor somebody else. Not everybody is thrilled about this level of disruption; instituting these programs took lots of back and forth, infinite calls and emails, and maneuvering, with some people putting their foot down and refusing to hear no. But the change is here now, and there’s no turning back.

“We have visibly changed the way our set looks 100 percent in the U.K.,” Fischer says. “And we’re working on it in the U.S. It’s such a win, and it feels really good also.”

Ash Bhasin, an Indian American woman from Simi Valley, knows how good it feels: She’s working on The Residence as a lighting tech. It’s a role not many women occupy in the industry — she says that on previous sets, she’s experienced passive discrimination, like guys assuming she can’t lift equipment — but through the Ladder program, she’s getting the experience and hours she needs to join the union. “I’m super-grateful,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to join the union for years. I’m hoping to learn as much as I can, and I hope the Ladder is able to exist for however long it’s needed. Until it’s not needed anymore.”

Malcolm Venable is a Senior Staff Writer at Shondaland. Follow him on Twitter @malcolmvenable.

Get Shondaland directly in your inbox: SUBSCRIBE TODAY