Helen Mirren weighed in on the Oscars diversity controversy this week and defended the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. However, she only defended them because she believes that there is an issue with diversity in the film business long before the awards season.
While speaking to Channel 4 in the U.K. about her work in the film Trumbo, Mirren said that it wasn’t fair to just blame the Academy for there not being any minority actors nominated for the second consecutive year.
“I think it’s unfair to attack the Academy,” the Oscar winner said. “It just so happened this year that... it went that way.”
Mirren said that Idris Elba would have definitely been nominated for Beasts of No Nation, which won him a SAG Award last weekend, if more people were willing to see the film.
“He wasn’t nominated because not enough people saw - or wanted to see - a film about child soldiers,” Mirren said.
Mirren insisted that she was not excusing the Academy, but instead thinks that the focus should be more on how movies are made.
“The issue we need to be looking at is what happens before the film gets to the Oscars. What kind of films are made, and the way in which they’re cast, and the scripts... go all the way back to the writing of the scripts,” she said. “So, it’s those things that are much more influential than ultimately, who stands there with an Oscar.”
The Academy has announced changes to its membership rules to make itself more diverse in response to the controversy.