BAFTA’s CEO is "very disappointed" by the lack of diversity in this year’s nominations.
The full set of nods for the EE BAFTA Awards were unveiled on Tuesday morning (07.01.20), with #BAFTAsSoWhite soon trending as fans lamented over how no people of colour were nominated in the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress categories or no women were nominated in Best Director.
And now, the company’s chief executive Amanda Berry has expressed her disappointment at the selection of nominations, insisting BAFTA have a "role to play" to ensure the industry becomes more diverse.
When asked if the BAFTA nominations were a "diverse list" whilst making an appearance on BBC Radio 4, she said: "If I’m being totally honest, no, I’m very disappointed … I’m going to totally agree with you because that’s how I felt when I first saw the list and this isn’t being disrespectful to anyone who has been nominated because it’s an incredibly strong list this year. If you look at the director category this year in which I hoped we would see at least one female director, that is an incredibly strong list. When I’m looking at the performance categories and the lack of diversity, I think you positioned it very well.
"BAFTA has a role to play here, it can’t tell the industry which films to green light and who to hire but what it can do is make sure it is finding and supporting talented people and giving them every opportunity to succeed. Talent is everywhere but opportunity is not … A couple of years ago we did an initiative to support female directors and actually looking at the list this year we have decided we are going to do it again. We need to up our efforts and keep the pressure on the industry to create these opportunities."
Joaquin Phoenix (‘Joker’) will go head to head with Leonardo DiCaprio (‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Adam Driver (‘Marriage Story’), Taron Egerton (‘Rocketman’) and Jonathan Pryce (‘The Two Popes’) for Leading Actor whilst Leading Actress will be contested between Jessie Buckley (‘Wild Rose’), Charlize Theron (‘Bombshell’), Scarlett Johansson (‘Marriage Story’), Saoirse Ronan (‘Little Women’) and Renee Zellweger (‘Judy’).
However, fans fumed the most over the Best Supporting Actress category, which saw Margot Robbie nominated twice in one category, for ‘Bombshell’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, alongside Laura Dern (‘Marriage Story’) and Florence Pugh, (‘Little Women’) as well as a second nod for Scarlett Johansson (‘Jojo Rabbit’).
BAFTA’s CEO is ‘very disappointed’ by the lack of diversity in this year’s nominations
