Hours after actress Charlotte Rampling told an interviewer that the blowback against this year’s all-white acting nominees was itself “racist”, she is walking back her comments.
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February 14, 2015. Charlotte Rampling holds the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role in 45 years after the award ceremony at the 2015 Berlinale Film Festival in Berlin, Germany.
She added that she wished every performance was given equal opportunity for consideration.
Rampling received backlash following her French radio interview on January 22, wherein she said that all the talk of an Oscars whitewash is actually anti-white.
The interview brought up the suggestion some have made that the Academy introduce quotas, to which Rampling said, “Why classify people? In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond”.
Following the outcry after the release of the Oscar nomination list, where all 20 acting nominees are white for the second year in a row, some stars, including Will Smith, his wife and Lee are calling for an Oscar boycott.
“There will always be problems with people saying this one is too handsome, this guy is too black, this guy is too white, there will always be someone of whom people say, ‘You are too, ‘” Rampling said. But members will have lifetime voting rights after three 10-year terms, as will those who have won or been nominated for an Academy Award. They say, ‘We’re black actors and we still don’t really exist’. “But does that necessarily mean there should be lots of minorities everywhere?”
Others including actors George Clooney, Mark Ruffalo, Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo, Viola Davis, and British director Steve McQueen have spoken of their disappointment with the lack of diversity among the nominees.
After her initial radio interview, many people slammed her comments on social media, including Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
The 51-member board pledged to double the number of women and minority members in the academy by 2020.
Matt Mueller, editor of film industry publication Screen International, said Rampling’s comments may hurt her chances at winning the coveted award.
The Academy approved a series of “substantive changes” to its rules and organizational structure in an effort to ensure the diversity of its membership amid mounting criticism on Friday.
When asked to elaborate, Rampling said “one can never really know”, but that “perhaps sometimes black actors have not earned a place in the final running”.
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“You can’t vote for an actor because he’s black – you can’t just say, ‘Oh I’m going to vote for him, he’s not very good, but he’s black.’ You’ve got to give a good performance”, he said.
