ABC News(NEW YORK) — What gets you out of bed in the morning?
If you answered: “I like money,” then you’re just like Naomi Bishop, a senior investment banker played by Anna Gunn in the movie Equity.
Bishop’s blunt statement in the film, before a group of young women who want to work on Wall Street, is met with nervous laughter. Until everyone in the room realizes she’s not joking. Her message: If women want to get ahead, money can’t be a dirty word.
Alysia Reiner and Sarah Megan Thomas, who also star in and produced Equity, say they hope the film raises important questions for everyone watching.
“Why isn’t it OK to talk about what you make?” Thomas asked ABC News Chief Business, Technology and Economics Correspondent Rebecca Jarvis in an interview on “Real Biz with Rebecca Jarvis.” “We talk about our sex life and who we’re sleeping with more than we’ll say, ‘Oh, we made X this year.’”
Reiner and Thomas want their all-female production company, Broad Street Pictures, to start changing the way things are done in Hollywood and beyond.
“I’m a huge fan of, ‘Be the change you want to see,’ and I don’t really like talking about things I don’t like. I like just changing it,” said Reiner.
The most difficult lesson Thomas and Reiner learned along the way?
“That failure happens to everyone … and [it’s] the only way to success,” said Thomas. “And I don’t mean small failure. I mean fall-on-your-face, big failure.”
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