As pressure continued to mount on Oscars body the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has vowed to address the issue, 2006 Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon and 2012 nominee Viola Davis also spoke out on the diversity deficit.
Advertisement
Mark Ruffalo may skip the Academy Awards.
Veteran actor Dustin Hoffman echoed Ruffalo’s sentiment, telling the BBC, “Our county, there’s a subliminal racism and it’s been there… the end of the civil war didn’t change that, it’s only been 200 years”.
“I’m weighing it, yes”, he said.
Ruffalo is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Spotlight, which is based on a true story about a group of investigative journalists who uncover the sexual abuse inflicted upon children by Catholic priests in Boston, Massachusetts. “I woke up in the morning thinking, ‘What is the right way to do this?’ Because if you look at Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, what he was saying is the good people who don’t act are much worse than the wrongdoers who are purposely not acting and don’t know the right way”.
“My wife’s not going”. It would be awkward for me to show up with Charlize Theron.
Famed director Spike Lee told “Good Morning America” that he will be at a New York Knicks basketball game instead. “If we’re not part of the solution then we’re part of the problem”.
“I really appreciated this article in TIME on the lack of racial and gender diversity in this year’s Oscar nominations”, Witherspoon wrote, referring to the publications feature, “The Oscar Nominations Prove the Academy Still Doesn’t Get It”. The only reason that I’m probably not going to take part in the boycott is because I’m representing another kind of victim, and the Oscars mean a lot to these people.
Mark later clarified on Twitter that he will be making an appearance at the Oscars. That tweet is pinned to the top of his page.
Advertisement
The BET founder made no comments of a growing boycott of the February 28 telecast.
