The 2016 Oscars
boycott is getting contentious – “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” alum Janet Hubert, who played Aunt
Viv, is calling out Jada Pinkett Smith & Will
Smith.
In a strongly worded (and quite shady!) video message, Janet responded
to Jada calling for a boycott of the upcoming award show, which failed to
nominate any diverse actors – including Will Smith for “Concussion.”
https://youtu.be/N9eY-kKXBnQ
“I want to say something to Jada
Pinkett Smith asking other black actors to boycott the Oscars. First of all,
Miss Thing: Does your man not have a mouth of his own with which to speak?””
Janet said in her 4-minute video message.
According to Janet, the world has bigger
issues than award show nominations.
“The second thing, girlfriend, there’s a lot of s*** going on
in the world that you all don’t seem to recognize. People are dying. Our boys
are being shot left and right. People are hungry. People are starving. People
are trying to pay bills,” the actress continued. “And you’re talking
about some motherf***ing actors and Oscars. It just ain’t that deep.”
And it didn’t stop there – Aunt Viv continued to lay into Will and
Jada.
READ: Complete List: Oscar Nominations 2016
“Here’s the other thing, for you to ask other actors to
jeopardize their careers … You know damn well, you don’t do that,” she
said. “They don’t care! I find it ironic that somebody who has made their
living and made millions and millions of dollars from the very people [who are
doing this] … That is not the way life works, baby. It’s very suspect to
me.”
And in her deepest, shadiest cut, Will’s former
co-star slammed his “Concussion”
performance.
“Maybe you didn’t deserve a nomination. I didn’t think,
frankly, you deserved a Golden Globe nomination,” she said to the actor.
“You ain’t Barack and Michelle Obama. And y’all need to get over
yourselves … You
are a part of Hollywood. You are a part of the system that is unfair to
other actors.”
READ: Oscars’ Lack Of Diversity ‘Disappointing’ To Academy President
“Is it time that
people of color recognize how much power, influence, that we have amassed, that
we no longer need to ask to be invited anywhere?” she said in the video on
Facebook. “Maybe it’s time that we recognize that if we love and
respect and acknowledge ourselves in the way in which we are asking others to
do, that that is the place of true power.”
Following
the Oscar nominations, Access Hollywood’s Liz Hernandez spoke to Academy
President Cheryl Boone Isaacs about yet another year with very little
diversity among the nominees.
“Well,
it is disappointing, I have to say. This is something that’s very important to
the Academy and important to me and we are going to continue this fight of the
discussion and the discussion is a good one,” she told Access at the
time. “But, it is not just about talking, it is about doing and we
are very much still in that seat to drive this issue, to have more inclusion of
people of color and women to participate in one of the greatest art forms there
is.”
— Jesse Spero
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