Emma Thompson is a two-time Oscar winner, one for adapted screenplay, and one for Best Actress. She’s been invited to the Oscars many times as a nominee and a presenter, but she is not an apologist for the Academy at all. Emma attended the British Film Awards several days ago (with her daughter Gaia, seen in these photos) and she was asked about the ongoing discussion around #OscarsSoWhite and the changes the Academy has made around membership voting privileges. Emma’s answer was… unique! And please, don’t take everything she says literally.
Emma Thompson has offered a refreshingly blunt take on the matter of Hollywood acting so up-in-arms about an institution that, historically, has been pretty white the whole time. Asked about Hollywood’s public outcry, Thompson told a reporter at the British Film Awards, “It’s hilarious.” Her reasoning: “It’s no change there. It’s not as if [the Oscar nominations have] ever been awash with people of color.”
Cutting to the chase, she added, “Let’s face it, the Oscar membership is mainly old, white men. That’s the fact of it. So, either you wait for them all to die,” said before jokingly offering up another option. “Or kill them off slowly—I mean, I don’t know. There’s so many options, aren’t there?”
On a more positive note, Thompson ended the interview by giving the Screen Actors Guild props for actually implementing useful ways of encouraging diversity. Now if only the Academy could encourage diversity and, on a much lesser note, figure out a way to require Thompson to appear at the Oscars, we’d be happy.
You know what’s sort of funny/sad to me? That the conversation we’re having about the Academy is the same conversation we have in America about politics. Like, what do we do about the old, white racists? They skew everything in politics and in Hollywood. And in politics, the answer always boils down to: well, we just have to wait until all of those old racists die out. That seems to be the answer for the Academy too, although I do admire Cheryl Boone Isaacs for giving it the old college try.
Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.
Snort. I love Emma Thompson.
Yeah, she’s such a character. 😀
Me toooooo! She is amazing.
Such a great sense of humor! (Though Oprah said this very thing a while back about racists in general, and there are entire blogs and news pieces devoted to what a racist she is and how she hates white people because of it. Our world is a sickness.)
-TheRealPinky
I like her answer. And @pinky I wonder if those people will cry “racism against whites” over her saying this too.
There are many situations where people working for change freely admit that things won’t really start to move until the older generation dies off.
I watched the clip of this, she was self-aware and funny.
What’s the point of waiting for all the “old white racist” to die out when we’ll just have a group of new ones to contend with? Sadly age isn’t the only factor when pushing back against racism.
+1000 @MARTY.
Did you see/hear this young conservative talk/radio show host going on a rant about Beyoncé’s SB performance? It ain’t just old folks that are racist.
No, I haven’t seen that, but I’m not surprised. There has been a lot of ‘outrage’ from the far right over her performance and I’ve been trying stay clear because so many of the comments are littered with misogyny and racism. God forbid a black woman be confident AND promote social consciousness.
“It ain’t just old folks that are racist.”
And it ain’t just white folks who are racist either.
@truthsf: I wish it was just the far right that had racist/sexist reactions to Beyonce’s performance and video. Their reaction was definitely louder though.
It’s frightening to see how many people my age ( I’m 23) have beliefs that you’d be shocked to hear from someone in their 90s. Times of economicall and political unstability tend to send people into more conservative beliefs ( and that’s also hard because I usually strongly disagree with them and sometimes have a hard time understanding how people can think like that), but the way things are now is truly scary.
I’m genuinely shocked when I hear/read opinions from young people that are so retro, they belong in a history text book.
It used to be that we all simply laughed at or tolerated the old generations on the grounds that they grew up in that world. Even now, if an OAP or anyone post 70yrs old says something retro and offensive, I excuse it on the grounds of their age.
With the young ones, it’s completely puzzling why they’ve gone back to retro views. The more vocal ones advocate for a scary world not seen since the 50s, they want to repeal laws we thought had settled certain humanitarian issues that shouldn’t have needed legislation to settle them.
Instead of progress, I see regression. And a combative refusal to find a middle ground solution.
+1 It’s depressing as hell.
It seems like most of the people our age and younger who express those kinds of beliefs were raised by people who have that same mentality. The parents, grandparents, and church leaders/other adult authority figures just pass the bigotry on to generation after generation of desperate, naive sheepchild. Some of these kids get involved with online hate movements too. It’s always nice when you come across someone who was raised with that kind of influence overcome it and think for themselves.
Marty, you speak the truth. It’s especially evident right now as people go apes%&t at the thought of a progressive SCOTUS justice replacing Scalia. I had to stop reading last night, I feel my blood pressure rising at the vitriol.
Did you see John Oliver’s take on this? As usual, it’s brilliant and points to the hypocrisy of the Republicans and Mitch McConnell in particular on this issue. It’s called the “Thurmond Rule,” named after notorious, unabashed racist Strom Thurmond, and it’s an unwritten rule that POTUS should not appoint a new SCOTUS Justice during his last six months in office. First of all, Obama has 10 months left; and second of all, McConnell rallied AGAINST that rule when GWB had a vacancy to fill. He did it again in 2005 and NOW he wants to abide by it!? He needs a new makeup artist because his racism is showing.
-TheRealPinky
Oh don’t even get me started on the Scalia drama. The man was a racist and homophobe for most of his life and our Democratic President isn’t suppose to do his job and nominate someone to replace him? It’s so frustrating!
I agree, Marty. Powerful elites – who are, more often than not, white, male and wealthy – self-replicate. And for every means of self-replication you take away from them, they seem to have another in reserve. It’s all very depressing.
Yep. I could give you at least 20 examples of people under 30 being ignorant, offensive, or down right racist. I don’t think true racism and bigotry will ever go away, but I still have hope for a more collective progressive society.
You make them sound like the Borg from Star Trek, though I’m not disagreeing with you. That picture just flashed in my head as I was reading your comment. Carry on
Marty: You have to hope, don’t you? Cos what then? If you don’t?
But I think there is plenty of room for anger, too. Rage in love and love in rage, as my wise friend is always telling me!
JeanGrey: ha. Sorry. Resistance is NOT futile. (I say futile in a Britisher accent, BTW).
I think in this day and age, rage is more useful than hope.
Locke – I think it’s both. Hope for the future: rage for the NOW.
@Sixer- Oh yes, my rage is deep. Sometimes too much so, but I probably wouldn’t have the determination to keep fighting if it wasn’t there.
If I didn’t have hope I would probably be a hermit. But the thing is I’m proud of who I am, I proud to be a woman and black/latina. I’m not perfect, I make mistakes but always leave room for growth and I’ll always fight for others to do the same.
Marty – if it helps at all, I read all the comments posted on these threads even when I have little to contribute myself. You and others are giving me a better perspective on how this stuff rolls in a country other than my own, and I use it and spread it everywhere I can. You ladies on here are performing a public service.
It really does help, thank you Sixer. Honestly, that’s all I ask of people: allow yourself to learn. The subjects I talk about now I didn’t automatically know, I had to learn them. I really believe that’s the path to true progress.
Thanks, Marty. Came to say the very same. Depressing, isn’t it?
This is what happens when you ask opinions about social and political issues from people who have NO CLUE how the rest of us actually live. Emma – like many in her line of work – doesn’t actually mix with regular folk. It has been many decades since she was a regular folk. So she just makes some sweeping, grand comment designed to make her look social-justice-y and concerned, but she’s not actually saying anything substantive at all. It’s not just her. It’s also people like Hiddleston, and Cumberbatch, and Clooney, and a bunch of the B-list white actresses whose names I can’t even remember, but they always pop up with some socio-political commentary on Twitter that sounds righteous but is actually meaningless to their world. It’s all designed to make them look like they Care About the Less Fortunate and Marginalized. Mind you, I like a lot of these people as actors. But I don’t care a whit about their personal commentaries.
While I agree with the broader point you’re making, I don’t think Emma should be bundled in with the others you mention, least of all Clooney who, a few years back, she took publicly to task over his ongoing and extremely cynical involvement with Nestle. She’s no Clooney and is engaged and committed to causes that show she’s far more than just another celeb on a personal PR mission.
Thompson supported Roman Polanski. You don’t get more “elitist bubble” than that. Thankfully, one of the “regular folk” smacked her upside the head and pulled her out of her stupor.
Actually, she retracted her support of Polanski when a fan pointed out to her some details she missed. She apologized. She is the only celebrity who removed her name from the petition.
I don’t doubt Emma has some privilege she’s not above subconsciously defending but I agree with Guesto: she’s streets better than most of them.
Meanwhile, her ex Kenneth Branagh is putting his money where his mouth is and giving Lola Chakrabarti and Adrian Lester a second London run of Red Velvet, via his Garrick company. So good on him.
Excellent point. I see Emma Thompson mentioned a lot on this website and she comes across rather clueless to me.
I respectfully disagree – during the past 15 years she has been a dedicated supporter and ambassador of the international anti-poverty charity ActionAid. She and her husband took a year off their acting work to spend in Africa, where they actually met, fell in love with and eventually adopted a young boy who had been kidnapped and forced into fighting as a child soldier. He graduated uni and is now doing his post-graduate studies in international political law with the intention of going back to Africa to work fighting conscription of children as soldiers, etc.
She’s been directly involved in work to support grandmothers across Africa who are left to care for AIDS-orphaned children and has traveled to Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia and South Africa to work with young girls and women who have been raped or kidnapped into the sex trade and suffering from AIDS/HIV as a result.
She’s one of the few who puts into action what many others are merely mouthing.
Jaded – here’s Greg recently, doing a TV expose on celebrity/corporate tax avoidance: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/07/hmrc-tax-avoidance-dispatches-greg-wise-channel-4. I take from this that he’s not married to a woman who offshores all her income. Like I say, very few people can entirely banish their various privileges, but some make a lot more effort than others.
Sixer – thanks for the link. Brings to mind U2 and countless other celebrities who have more money than God and still bloviate about ending poverty and changing the world whilst squirreling away their fortunes.
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
We’ve been waiting for the OLD WHITE RACIST do die out for over 230+ years. They don’t die out sadly.. Maybe they clone themselves or they make sure their racist legacy is passed on through their children and grand children. They don’t die out.
There are always new ones waiting in the wing for their time to be racist.
I enjoy her humor. She needs to write another great script.
“Waiting for folks to die”
Is like how we deal with 90% of any of our issues in America.
Sad to say this policy works pretty well. Just looking at photos from 50 to 60 years ago could make you shudder, go back 100 and you’d feel sick at all the normal smiling couples casually photographed next to men hanging from trees.
Waiting for folks to die and their unique breed of evil to die with them is a waiting game of progress. 50 more years the world could be pretty amazing.
The solution world wide has always been revolution and the forced culling of the determined-to-retain-the-status-quo section of the population.
You’re right. And America is setting itself up for just that. Squash the middle class and the poor have nothing to strive for and nothing left to lose. The government had better do something about that. And QUICK!
-TheRealPinky
She gave the best answer among all the white people who were asked about this. Love her so much.
@Cornyblue, this. It isn’t the worst idea she’s ever had, and it is BY FAR the best answer given by a white actor ever since the nominations were announced.
I remember this too being offered as the solution during legitimate Sunday morning news interviews and on Time/Newsweek for getting LGBT protection laws and Gay Mariage ballot votes: waiting until the old prejudiced generation passes away and the younger more LGBT friendly generations ascend to positions of power. The arc of history tending to move towards liberal policies.
But I don’t know. The younger generation might be more open minded but they are also entitled and will be motivated to keep the status quo. More White women in positions of power show them imitating the views and prejudices of their White male fathers and mentors.
You just have to look up the oblivious statements of SOME White feminists to see that they will favor hiring women that look like them and are from the same social strata. They are against affirmative action even though they are the largest beneficiaries of it. They too per population take food stamps but point to Black and Latino women as the welfare queens.
Some things will getvbetter but others will stay the same. South Africa has shown that even when Whites are the minority population they hold on to power so the increasing Latino population might not necessarily mean more POC in positions of power.
blaming the noms on old white men in the academy means younger members doing interviews dont have to take any responsibility for nominating anything diverse or hiring more diverse casts if they are in that position.
i knew a few old white academy members growing up (neighbors) and they didnt even fill out their ballots because they couldn’t be bothered to watch all the films. I’m not saying no old white member votes, but each year younger people get invitations. the lack of noms is a symptom of a problem about who gets hired, whose scripts are made, whose movies get pushed at award time, etc, not the problem itself
lmao I love her.
Haha love it! She’s hilarious.
And you know there’s a whole crowd of folks who are squealing in rage about this — the same crowd that typically identifies as “anti-PC” and “I don’t care if you’re offended”. Delicious.
Lol the ones who screech the loudest about how easily offended and PC everyone is are usually the biggest thin skinned crybabies! What they’re really saying when they say people are too pc nowadays is “them womenz, blacks, gays, [insert minority] sho’ have gotten uppity”.
Yep. It’s amazing how quick the “down with this generation’s political correctness/tumblr/oh my God you guys are so Orwellian/I’m a defender of free speech” crowd is to cry oppression and outrage when people are careless about “causes” they care about.
I like her and it was funny, I guess, but it’s sort of another version of be patient, your time will come?
No, I don’t think so, just Emma being a weary realist. What could she have said that’s going to make one ounce of real difference?
I believe Emma, like a whole lot of other engaged people both within and outside the industry, wishes that things were different but has grown to realise that energy is best spent on the things that matter and, most specifically, not allowing the existing state of play to break her own personal stride in doing what she can do, in her own way, to make change.
Ok, that’s fair. So, rather then saying “just wait,” she’s saying, “don’t waste your energy on that, just keep on pushing for change in other ways?” Something like that?
Lol the ones who screech the loudest about how easily offended and PC everyone is are usually the biggest thin skinned crybabies! What they’re really saying when they say people are too pc nowadays is “them womenz, blacks, gays, [insert minority] sho’ have gotten uppity”.
Uh, okay.
Did I hit a nerve?
Yes, you hit a nerve. Alicia is an mra.
Ha, of course she is. Off-topic but I just wanted to tell you how much I always appreciate your articulate, sex-positive comments on here. This site is so frustratingly misogynistic when it comes to the subject of “modesty”. You practically saved me from having a rage stroke in that old Rashida Jones post. It’s a very personal subject for me so I’m usually too enraged to contribute anything coherent, I get so happy when I see your username, always fighting the good fight <3
Thank you. And don’t feel bad about getting ragey. We can’t always politely sip our tea while someone is saying something misogynistic AF. And we shouldn’t have to.
Apparently this is the only time it’s acceptable to joke about killing people off. If this had been about any other group I imagine the response would have been quite different.
Seriously. It’s stupid and obnoxious, and people seem to repeat it fairly often here. If celebs were saying something like “well the world will be better off when all the fat people die of diabetes”, people would be upset.
I knew the “We Conservative White Dudes and Our Good Wives Are So Persecuted In America” society would show up and equate this with real violence and the things that people who are actually discriminated against for what they are have to deal with.
jc126 – irony awareness aside, presumably, what with the lack of universal healthcare an’ all, overweight people with diabetes aren’t the beneficiaries of structural inequality. In fact, rather the opposite. Which would be the point.
I wish people would stop pertetuating the myth that the old guard white guys are going to die off and then change will come – and that they’re the only ones holding it up. Plenty of the new guard have similar if not the same attitudes, or the just love passing the buck and/or tapping out on the diversity conversation when it becomes about their choices.
More likely when the old guard die off they’ll be replaced with tons of #FFFFFFeminists who don’t even want to talk about equal pay and for whom WoC simply don’t exist.
Old white woman complains about old white men. Eh.
“Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that’s not fair. How can you tell what’s best and what’s worst from these awards? We’re talking about art.” – Javier Bardem.
PC is for fascists but suggesting genocide is never funny. What is more amusing is the blatant bigotry of the commenter here falling over each other to congratulate each other on their tolerance thru bigoted statements about older people white people and gasp politically different people. Sad sad little hypocritical bigots from the far left…. the new puritans.
Old, white , priveleged guys don’t just die out- they get themselves a 30 year younger girlfriend and procreate to make sure power is still, to some degree, in their hands. Thompson made one of her typical jokes, and actually didn’t say anything of importance.
I love Emma. She’s actually right. Except I’m constantly dismayed at how close-minded some young people are these days. Hopefully, they outgrow it. It’s time for this old $hitty way of thinking to just die.