Actor Emma Lahana believes it is important to create shows and films where all the voices are represented fairly and that was one of the reasons for her to join the critically-acclaimed young-adult superhero drama Marvel's "Cloak & Daggers".
In the show, screening on Amazon Prime Videos, Lahana plays the role of Brigid O'Reilly, an honest cop whose life intersects with the lives of two lonely teenagers coming to the realisation that the tragedy that killed their parents also imbued them with superpowers.
"It is wonderful to work on this show because we have a diverse writers' room. It is important that showrunners ensure that everyone is represented. These voices need to real and they need to be heard. We were lucky to have Joe Pokaski at the helm because he made sure that people are seen, heard and represented properly," Lahana told PTI in an interview from London.
"The writers were really in tune with what is currently going on in America. It is a very progressive show so everything landed perfectly."
The actor, whose character gradually comes to the centre of the story in the second season, says it is rare to find complicated and layered parts as a female actor.
"My character in the show is well thought out. I am a complicated person and I was allowed to play that. She is good at her job but at the same time she is complicated, feminine and layered.
"Joe wanted that we stay true to the fact that as a woman you are constantly coming up against men all the time. She is new to the department and there is hostility that she faces."
The 34-year-old actor believes the shift post #MeToo was an important one in Hollywood and will bring about a positive change in the way women are perceived in the show business.
The New Zealand-born actor says she did not face a bad situation thanks to her "two strong female managers" but something like this "really exists".
"I have been lucky to have two strong female managers and they have been really protective of me... But it is very difficult. I remember being a teenager in this industry. I would get comments from directors. A lot of people don't understand and say 'Why did you stay? Why didn't you tell anyone?' It is because you can lose your job very easily and get a bad reputation as a diva and then you don't have work anymore.
"It is something that needed to be addressed to stop victim-blaming and victim-shaming and taking pressure off from women where we are making them the perpetrator somehow instead of the victim," she said.
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