“I’m hoping in 12 months or so we can look back and say this was a watershed moment, and thank God we put that right”, McQueen, whose film 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture in 2013, told the Guardian in an interview published Sunday. The Board promises to double the number of women and “diverse members” of the Academy by 2020.
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The landmark decision comes after a number of Hollywood celebrities criticised the Academy for failing to recognise people of colour in four of its acting categories for the second consecutive year.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences unanimously voted to make “historic” changes to its membership in the face of an industry-wide boycott of the Oscars over the lack of diversity among nominees.
Beginning later this year, each new member’s voting status will last 10 years, and will be renewed if the new member has been active in film during that decade. A 2012 Los Angeles Times poll found that 94 percent of Oscar voters were white and 77 percent were men, USA Today reports.
In a video posted to Facebook, Pinkett Smith said she would not even watch the Oscars on TV this year.
Looking to tamp down this firestorm, academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs wisely – and quickly – released a statement, a mea culpa of sorts. “It runs through Hollywood and it’s a bigger problem than the Oscars themselves and a bigger issue than just the Academy’s membership”. It’s also taking “immediate action to increase diversity by adding new members…to its executive and board committees where key decisions about membership and governance are made”.
The largely white, male and older makeup of the 6,000-plus film industry professionals who belong to the academy has always been cited as a barrier to racial and gender equality at the Oscars. The New York Times reported that the changes were approved at an unusual special meeting of the group’s 51-member governing board.
He later apologized, saying he believed “deeply that there need to be more diverse filmmakers making movies”.
‘One good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color + women artists, ‘ she wrote on Twitter.
At the producers awards on Saturday, there were frequent references to the diversity issue. Black-ish star Anthony Anderson presented an award for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and jumped on the opportunity to comment when no one was present to accept the honor.
“You have to understand that the struggle of oppressed people anywhere in the world is a struggle of oppressed people around the world”, she told John Pienaar on BBC Radio 5 live’s Pienaar’s Politics.
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This time around, the blow-back against the academy was massive, as performances by several black actors had been seen as Oscar-worthy by movie fans and critics alike.
