Two leading black figures in film, Steve McQueen and Lupita Nyong’o, have added their voices to the campaign for more diversity among the Oscar nominations.
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After the second year in a row in which every single one of the Oscar-nominated actors were white, and after Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith publicly called for a boycott of the Academy Awards, the Academy has issued its response. Mr Lee joined other Hollywood A-listers like actress Jada Pinkett-Smith, wife of actor Will Smith, in expressing outrage over the absence of minority nominees.
Nyong’o posted a statement late Tuesday night to her Instagram.
Goldberg ended by stating how the boycott is unfair to this year’s Oscars host Chris Rock.”Chris Rock is the host of the Academy Awards and so to boycott him seems just as bad as what everybody is saying”, she said.
He told the BBC: “I t can’t be about box office, because I think black actors and stories along those lines have done very, very well, obviously”.
As for the man who sparked the conversation, Lee will opt to attend a New York Knicks game in Madison Square Garden instead of the Oscars – favoring the orange and blue over an event, he said, will be “lily white”.
The 6,300 members of the Academy, made up of people from the film industry, vote on who is nominated for the Oscars each year. I’m a product of “elite” academic and professional institutions. and I’m convinced that the vast majority of the individual members of those institutions are right-thinking and would like to see diversity improve.
The head of the organisation behind the Academy Awards feels “heartbroken and frustrated” over the lack of diversity in the 2016 Oscar nominations and has vowed to rectify the problem.
“This goes further than the Academy Awards”, he said. Under Cheryl Boone Isaac’s leadership, the Academy is moving closer to getting in step with the real world.
“And so I totally get it and I support them but I have to demur and I have to stand up for the people I have to stand up for”. “As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership over the last four years”.
‘But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. Sean Penn got in his feelings about your Jude Law joke but something tells me he’s got more important things to be testy about this year.
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“What we can’t control is the Academy, the way it is now; what we can’t control is the Hollywood studios, the way they are now; but we can control the remote dials in our homes”, he pointed out. Actress Janet Hubert responded with a scathing video message claiming the Smiths were only miffed because Will Smith didn’t get a nomination. It was widely expected Idris Elba would bag a nomination for “Beast Of No Nation” but unfortunately he didn’t. Both the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild felt it was best picture worthy, as did the American Film Institute when they named it one of the 10 best films of the year.
