As reported in an article on IndieWire, actor Allison Williams worked on the pilot for Boardwalk Empire as a stand-in.

Recently, at the Nantucket Film Festival’s “Women Behind the Words” panel, on the general topic of dismissiveness and disrespect the female panelists had experienced in TV and film, Williams recounted a moment in that 2009 pilot work when she was the recipient of what many stand-ins might refer to as a professionally demeaning comment.

Williams said of the moment:

There’s like ten stories fighting their way from my brain to my mouth that I’m trying to keep out of my mouth. I guess one of them, just very quickly … people just underestimate your humanity often as a young woman up and coming in our business. I was a stand-in for the pilot of “Boardwalk Empire,” which was the coolest experience ever, an amazing pilot. It was shot on film. It was incredible. But I was at craft services and a member of the crew came up and said, “So what do you do here? You’re the on-set eye candy?” That’s an example of, I’m at work and that’s what someone says to me.

Are Stand-Ins Sometimes Hired as “Eye Candy”?

Williams’ statement is not the first anecdote of a stand-in being confused for “eye candy” on set.

The Editor of Stand-In Central has heard similar accounts over the years of female stand-ins’ being hired effectively as “eye candy” for what turns out to be a largely male, heterosexual crew, giving them “something to look at” more than simply for lighting and lining up shots.

That a crew member actually asked this directly to a stand-in implies not an aberrant situation Williams was in, but rather a “leaky pipe” — that this kind of demeaning hiring practice around stand-ins happens in TV and film, though perhaps it doesn’t leak out, or the leak is never found.

What to Do?

If you are witness or recipient to discriminatory hiring practices in stand-in work, there may be a few things you can do. Admittedly, none of these avenues may be very “fun” to pursue, and frustratingly many stand-ins will make a risk calculation that leads to doing nothing rather than doing something — likely for reasons of job security or something similar.

Here are some ideas:

  • Contact SAG-AFTRA about the issue, to document your account. It may be that others have reported issues with the hiring practices of the production, and your account may contribute to SAG-AFTRA filing a grievance against the production if warranted (and, sadly, if it cares to do so in its discretion).
  • Contact the Human Resources department for the production. Although this contact information may be difficult to track down, you may start with the callsheet for such information. Also, asking SAG-AFTRA for that information may be helpful, in case the union can provide it where the infornation is not easily discovered.
  • Alert others. If you have solid reason to believe stand-ins are or were hired as “eye candy” or something other than for professional reasons, there may be pretext for saying the workplace has a hostile work environment. Alerting other stand-ins to the hostile work environment (and your reasons for saying so) may help them become more acutely aware of the work environment, especially when it is not easily observed. For example, by making such alerts to other stand-ins, these stand-ins may be careful to wear different clothing to work than they might otherwise have, given how stand-in clothing may cater to the demeaning nature of the hostile work environment.

There may be other avenues to take, too. Speaking to casting directors on the job may be one avenue, but casting directors are agents of the employer (i.e., the production), so there may be a conflict in interest in their helping you with a hiring issue in which they may have been intimately involved. Talking with SAG-AFTRA or an on-set union field representative (if one should ever show up) may give you other ideas.

Hopefully, though, your experience is unlike anything Williams reports to have experienced on the pilot of Boardwalk Empire. Read her account here:

Have you worked as a stand-in in TV and film and noticed a propensity to hire stand-ins as “eye candy” over skills or assets they bring to stand-in work? Share your accounts in the comments below!