‘How to Get Away with Murder’ star Viola Davis on Oscar controversy

Explaining she feels this year’s lack of black nominees is to blame on producers and studios failing to envision black actors in major roles, the 50-year-old mostly absolved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) of blame in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.

Due to the outcry over another year of #OscarsSoWhite and prominent black actors and directors planning to boycott this year’s Oscars ceremony, the Academy is already starting conversations about how to rectify its diversity problem. “How are they being distributed”, she said to ET correspondent Nischelle Turner on the questions Academy voting members should ask themselves in order to fix the issue.

Television is a faster, more nimble medium than film, where movies regularly take years to make; but it also has some structural advantages. Black actors battle against a wall of assumptions as to the roles they should play.

Caine told Britain’s Radio 4 Today show, “There’s loads of black actors”.

She also addressed pay disparity between white actresses and actresses of color, noting that as another area that still needs work.

One nominee, Charlotte Rampling, conveyed an outlier opinion, “We can never know whether it’s truly the case, but maybe the black actors didn’t deserve to make it to the final list”. “I think this is one step toward making the Academy more diverse and inclusive and so I appreciate president [Cheryl] Boone Isaacs spearheading this”. She said that the main issue she’s seeing is with the lack of big-time, serious distribution for what she termed “black films”. Cultural industries can lead the way in society, and there is no doubt that at times showbusiness has done just that, with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Star Trek’s interracial kiss among examples of Hollywood challenging prejudices.

“TV cares about its audience”, says Davis, who in September became the first African-American to win an Emmy for best actress in a drama. “That’s a part of it too that I think people are just focusing on that isn’t really the issue”. “It’s a symptom of a much greater disease”.

That puts the Oscars way behind ceremonies such as the Grammys (which over the last five years, 30 of the 100 nominees in the top four categories have been nonwhite) and the Emmys (which last year, a record 18 acting nominees were actors of color). Lupita Nyong’o won an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen was nominated for directing it and Chiwetel Ejiofor was for his performance. I saw Idris Elba [in Beasts Of No Nation]… 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.

At the time, The Help star gave an emotional acceptance speech which echoed her comments this week: “The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity”. Addressing Rock’s role in the awards, David A Love, editor of blackcommentator.com, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday, “You can’t have symbolism to make up for years of systemic discrimination”.