THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 76 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
PRINCESS: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/PHOTOFEST. TCHEN: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES FOR NARAS. FROMHOLZ: COURTESY OF SUBJECT.H
olly wood jobs come with a few
rites of hiring — the ID card, the
HR paperwork, the nondisclosure
agreement.
From film sets to agencies to executive
suites, NDAs still are in common use in the
entertainment industry, despite coming
under scrutiny recently for their application
in high-profile sexual misconduct settle-
ments at NBCUniversal, Fox News and The
Wei n stei n Co.
Young entertainment profes-
sionals eager for jobs are
— so far — still signing the
controversial confidential-
ity agreements. “People
may grouse about NDAs,
but it’s still the case that
people want to work in
this industry, and they will
most often sign what they’re
required to sign in order to
do so,” says Ann Fromholz, an
employment lawyer who conducts
investigations into workplace misconduct.
That’s certainly the case for actor Arvin Lee,
28, who has appeared on Veep and Arrested
Development, and has had to sign NDAs before
auditioning for certain projects. “I’m probably
more in the ignorance-is-bliss camp,” Lee says.
“I just assume that if a project is big enough, it
needs an NDA.”
Over the past two years there have been
efforts to limit the use of NDAs, such as the
passage of new laws in 13 states, including
California and New York, designed to focus
the tools more narrowly on the protection of
confidential business information rather than
on covering up a company’s bad practices.
Some employers have begun proactively revis-
ing their standard NDAs to make explicit that
they do not cover allegations of harassment or
discrimination.
“The standard NDA is broad, and they have
non-disparagement clauses that can cover
everything,” says Time’s Up president Tina
Tchen, who called on NBCUniversal to release
its employees from their NDAs in October.
“What we’ve learned over the last two years is
that what looks like a vanilla corporate agree-
ment can be detrimental to the workplace, not
just to employees but to others in a company
learning about the prevalence of a problem.
You don’t realize you have a toxic culture
because it’s dealt with in secret.”
The issue of NDAs drew new attention
Oct. 25 when NBCUniversal issued a statementallowing former staffers to be released from
their agreements — if they checked with the
company’s legal department first. The move,
sparked by criticism of NBC News in Ronan
Farrow’s book Catch and Kill, drew a sharp
rebuke from Tchen and others. “Requiring sur-
vivors to come forward again to the employer
they left in a moment of trauma isn’t a good
practice,” Tchen says. “These are the kinds of
things that make people fearful about coming
forward.” After NBC’s announce-
ment, several former Fox News
employees, including Gretchen
Carlson, asked to be released
from agreements as well.
In some industries, it has
been the youngest entrants
who are pushing back at
the secretive practices
that companies have long
relied upon to deal with
worker complaints, as when a
grassroots group of law students
organized at Harvard in 2018 to
oppose mandatory arbitration for summer
associates at law firms. The practice, in which
employees waive their right to sue over illegal
treatment at work, tends to favor corporations
over workers. The group, called the People’s
Parity Project, called on law students to boy-
cott firms that required the arbitration, and
succeeded in convincing major firms, includ-
ing Kirkland & Ellis and Sidley
Austin, to change their policies.
“This younger generation that
has grown up on social media and
feels comfortable talking about
their personal lives views issues
like pay secrecy and NDAs very
differently,” Tchen says. “A lot of
millennials who had pay secrecy
rules in place at their companies
were posting their salaries online.
They do not have the inhibitions around talk-
ing about these issues that my generation did.”
There’s another reason why younger employ-
ers may eventually be inclined to push back
on signing broad NDAs — they’re likelier than
their older peers to complain about their work-
place culture.
“There’s a willingness among a younger
generation to speak up when they don’t like
something, regardless of whether it violates
company policy,” says Fromholz. “People are
still going to do things at work that are not
appropriate, but this generation is more will-
ing to speak up about it when they do.”When it comes to confidentiality agreements, many complain, but the lure of work means most agree
at their own risk: ‘What looks like a vanilla corporate agreement can be detrimental’ By Rebecca KeeganWhy Young Hollywood Is Still
Signing NDAs — for Now
TchenFromholzSTREAMING “Melrose Place. I even
have a piece of the courtyard hang-
ing in my office.”CAROLINA GARCIA // 34
Director of Original Series,
Netflix
As a professionally trained bal-
let dancer, Garcia always thought
she’d be a performer — but then
she surprised herself by getting a
business degree at the University of
San Diego. Obsessed with 24 at the
time, she nabbed an internship at
20th Century Fox TV, which led to
a post-college gig at the studio on
Dana Walden’s desk. “I called it the
Walden Bootcamp and to this day
I call her my entertainment mom,”
says Garcia, who is originally from a
small province in Argentina but grew
up in Claremont. She spent nine
years at Fox before one day stum-
bling on Netflix’s corporate-culture
PowerPoint online. Intrigued by the
unconventional values, she became
the second hire on the streamer’s
young adult programming team,
where she’s been integral to
Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why
and Sabrina. She still dances almost
every day, too, and even sold out her
own musical theater show.
WEIRDEST WAY I’VE MET A CLIENT/
COLLABORATOR “At a dance class.
And also a bakery.”ROB GATI / 33
Senior Manager, Hulu
The New Jersey native, who used
to binge Simpsons reruns for hours
after school, has been obsessed
with comedy as long as he can
remember. After an internship at
Heyday Films, the Princeton grad
landed on Peter Rice’s desk at
Fox in 2012, and after three years,
Rice helped Gati transition into his
first executive role at Hulu, just as
the streamer was building out its
original programming team. “It was a
wild time to be there,” says Gati, who
recently married Kaplan/Perrone
manager Hannah Ozer. He worked
on early originals Difficult People
and Casual and more recently has
been key in crafting Hulu’s comedy
slate, from Seth Rogen and Evan