Tracee Ellis Ross, celebrities respond to Jada Pinkett Smith’s proposed Oscar boycott

Jan 18, 2016

With the #OscarsSoWhite again, Hollywood is trying to figure out how to solve the lack of diversity in award nominations, and Jada Pinkett Smith has recently proposed the solution: boycott the Oscars.

While plenty of stars are outraged about the diversity problem, though, not all of them seem to be on board with Smith’s idea.

“I don’t know if avoiding it altogether is going to help, but I just think we have to continue to move forward,” Niecey Nash told Entertainment Tonight. “We have this awareness and this spotlight — we’ve got to look at other work. There’s other work out there that I think was missed. We’ve just got to do better.”

Gina Rodriguez, meanwhile, pointed out that the voting membership of the Oscars itself, which consists mostly of older white men, needs to rectify its diversity issues.

“You also have to look at the diversity on the Academy’s board,” Rodriguez said. “It’s not as diverse as reflected in today’s society. [We’ve] got to fix that.”

Tracee Ellis Ross said that she “wasn’t planning on going anyway” to the Oscars but did clarify that, because she works in television, she was probably not going to be invited anyway, because the award show “does not necessarily apply” to her.