Looking for diversity, Hollywood could turn on the TV

“You can not win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there”.

She joins Jada Pinkett-Smith, Lupita Nyong’o, George Clooney, Mark Ruffalo, Spike Lee, Will Smith and many more who have spoken out about the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.

Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement earlier this week that she’s calling for “big changes” in the makeup of the group’s voting membership and said she was “heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion”.

A year after host Neil Patrick Harris quipped that the Oscars were honoring Hollywood’s “best and Whitest”, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled a slate of nominees January 14 that once again included no Black actors or directors, prompting a dismayed revival of the “OscarsSoWhite” hashtag.

“There’s loads of black actors. In the end you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black”, Sir Michael Caine told the Today Show on Radio 4. “I woke up in the morning thinking, ‘What is the right way to do this?’ Because if you look at Martin Luther King’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”.

Davis, speaking by phone Wednesday, said of those snubbing the event, “I think they are reflective of the African-American community”. “Like I said, the Oscars are not really the issue”, said the actress.

The How To Get Away With Murder star, herself a two-time Oscar nominee, was pretty candid when addressing the issue, asking many films featuring black actors are produced each year.

“There’s always a tendency, it seems, to label things and speak out against things, but I want to make it clear that I’m not against the mainstream”, he said.

“The Academy is “the” establishment, it’s the most visible representation of the film business, but it is not the film business”, Stephen Galloway from The Hollywood Reporter said.

“I’ve been a part of that and very happy to have been a part of that”.