Spike Lee talks diversity at Oscars

Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee says “it’s going to be a long, hard process” to increase diversity on a substantial level at the Academy Awards. The illustrious writer-director-producer will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Toronto Black Film Festival on Thursday, just days after an Oscars show in which all four acting awards went to white actors. In fact, there was only one person of colour nominated in an acting category at Sunday’s show — Cynthia Erivo, who played the lead in the Harriet Tubman biopic “Harriet.”

Meanwhile, no female filmmakers were nominated for best director. “It’s not going to turn around until there’s more diversity amongst the gatekeepers,” Lee said in a phone interview. Lee said he feels the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has “done a great job of getting more people in as voting members.” But he “knew there was no way in hell people of colour” would get the same amount of Oscar nominations in the acting categories this year that they did 2017, when Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Naomie Harris, Ruth Negga, Mahershala Ali, and Dev Patel were all up for trophies.

Those 2017 nominations came after two years in which no actors of colour were nominated, prompting the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag movement aimed at increasing diversity at the Academy, which responded by making changes to its membership.