Credit...Keith Negley

The Hashtag That Changed the Oscars: An Oral History

Five years ago, #OscarsSoWhite rewrote the narrative in an industry with entrenched disparities. Here, Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay and other insiders tell the story as they lived it.

“Congratulations to those men.”

A month ago, exactly three seconds after she’d announced a list of Oscar nominees for best director that excluded women, the writer and actress Issa Rae appended those four words, an indictment sheathed in a ribbon of praise: “Congratulations to those men.”

The official announcement and its condemnation, delivered in almost the same breath on a live telecast, say a lot about Hollywood in 2020. The industry is in the clutches of an extremely public identity crisis, in which the fresh, multicultural image it aspires to (Rae, her co-host, John Cho) is undermined by the observable evidence (the list of nominees).

Before #OscarsSoWhite, a social justice campaign that began five years ago last month, the crisis had been contained. The fact that 92 percent of top film directors were men and 86 percent of top films featured white actors in the lead roles — a pattern dating back decades — did not often dominate entertainment news, least of all on Hollywood’s biggest night.

As the former academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, one of more than a dozen people who spoke to The Times for this history of the movement, said recently: “That was the industry: You’d scan around the room, and everyone looked the same. But people didn’t get what was going on. Members would say, ‘We’re professionals ­— we just vote for who’s best.’”

On Jan. 15, 2015, the academy awarded all 20 acting nominations to white actors for the first of two consecutive years, inspiring April Reign to create the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Reign, then a campaign finance lawyer and pop-culture-obsessed contributor to a loose community of black Twitter users, was hardly a Hollywood power broker.

But her words, coming on the heels of #BlackLivesMatter, erupted like a big bang, creating the conditions for a constellation of social movements — from #WhiteWashedOUT for Asian representation to Time’s Up for gender parity — that intensified media attention on the industry’s treatment of historically marginalized groups.

In the movie business, nothing is feared like bad press, and by 2016 timeworn incentive structures had begun to tilt in favor of increased diversity in front of and behind the camera. Films like “Get Out,” “Black Panther,” “Coco’’ and “Crazy Rich Asians” drove a multicultural gold rush at the box office as well as the Oscars, where a record 13 winners of color took home awards in 2019 alone.

But as this year’s nominees suggest, the old establishment has not been displaced overnight. Only one performer of color — Cynthia Erivo of “Harriet” — was nominated, and female directors of top-rated films, like Greta Gerwig of “Little Women,” Lorene Scafaria of “Hustlers” and Lulu Wang of “The Farewell,” were left out.

And yet it would be inaccurate to say that nothing has changed since that morning five years ago when Reign logged on to Twitter, or that recent developments have been undone. In edited excerpts below, filmmakers, awards-watchers and academy members tell the inside story of how what began as a three-word hashtag forced an insular, $42 billion industry to change course.

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Credit...Keith Negley

At 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, on Jan. 15, 2015, the nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards were announced live on television from the Beverly Hills headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

CHERYL BOONE ISAACS (president of the academy, 2013-17) The president gets to see the nominations about an hour and a half early, and as soon as I saw them, my heart sank.

APRIL REIGN (creator of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite) My kid was upstairs getting ready for school and I was watching in my family room as I got ready for work. It struck me that there were no people of color nominated, so I picked up my phone. “#OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair.” It happened in seconds.

DAWN HUDSON (chief executive of the academy) I had a very good idea what was going to come next.

REIGN I checked my phone at lunch and it was trending around the world: “#OscarsSoWhite they wear Birkenstocks in the wintertime.” “#OscarsSoWhite they have a perfect credit score.”

FRANKLIN LEONARD (founder of the Black List, a platform for unproduced screenplays) Her stroke of genius was that it was so economically put from a language perspective. And because there was basically no counterevidence, it demanded a certain attention.

SPIKE LEE (director, “BlacKkKlansman”) When black Twitter gets on your black ass … ooh, it ain’t no joke.

BARRY JENKINS (director, “Moonlight”) At a certain point, people just get fed up.

AVA DUVERNAY (director, “Selma”) It was a catalyst for a conversation about what had really been a decades-long absence of diversity and inclusion.

LEONARD It was the year after “12 Years a Slave” won. We had been led to believe that something substantive about the culture had changed. But then, just as in the transition from Obama to Trump, it turned out that maybe it hadn’t.

BOONE ISAACS It said a lot not just about the academy, but about America and where its bases of power are.

REIGN It could’ve been a bunch of different things — there were no women in the directors category, there were no visibly disabled people nominated — so #OscarsSoWhite has never just been about race. It’s about the underrepresentation of all marginalized groups.


At the center of the original #OscarsSoWhite debate was “Selma,” DuVernay’s film about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Thought to be an early awards favorite, it was ultimately nominated only in the best song and best picture categories, with DuVernay and her star, David Oyelowo, left unrecognized.

LEONARD There was this attempt to say that Ava was just making a pro-black movie that was all fiction, and it was really L.B.J. that led the civil rights movement.

JENKINS I’m sorry, but the idea that “Selma” wasn’t an artfully made film was bull.

DUVERNAY I knew that I wouldn’t get director. But I really felt strongly that David would get actor. That really startled me and disappointed me.

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Cast and crew members, including David Oyelowo, front, and Ava DuVernay behind him, at the premiere of “Selma.”Credit... Ray Tamarra/GC Images, via Getty Images

In a “Brutally Honest” Oscar ballot published by The Hollywood Reporter in February, an anonymous Oscar voter called the decision by the cast of “Selma” to express support for #BlackLivesMatter at the film’s New York premiere “offensive.”

LEONARD There was this pushback like, “How dare these people speak up so aggressively.” It was the #AllLivesMatter response, but for movies.

DUVERNAY Studio people had been whispering to me, “You shouldn’t have done that.” But I would do it all again. If you cannot be respectful of our alignment with that cause, with that protest, with that rallying cry, then there was nothing that I wanted from you anyway.


On Jan. 14, 2016, all 20 Oscar nominations in the acting categories went to white performers for the second year in a row, elevating the stature of #OscarsSoWhite. (The next morning, a front-page headline in The Los Angeles Times asked: “Where’s the Diversity?”) At an emergency meeting a week later, Hudson, Boone Isaacs and the academy’s board of governors approved ambitious targets for a membership initiative known as A2020, aiming to double the number of women and ethnically underrepresented members in four years.

REIGN One time you could call a fluke, two times feels like a pattern.

BOONE ISAACS We had already been working toward increasing diversity and inclusion, but we went from first to fourth gear.

HUDSON A crisis happens, and it becomes a catalyst for accelerated change.

BOONE ISAACS The statistics showed that our membership was 94 percent white and 77 percent male. People would say to me that it wasn’t on purpose, and I would ask them: Are you sure?

LEE Cheryl Boone Isaacs really made it her mission to open things up so that the voting body looked more like America.

LEONARD It gave me a little bit of hope.


Later that month, The Hollywood Reporter published letters from academy members who opposed the changes. The new rules, these members said, implied that “all of us are racists,” were “capitulating to political correctness,” and “lessened” the academy’s value as “a measuring stick for excellence,” among other objections.

BOONE ISAACS I do have my share of hate mail for ruining the organization.

RUTH CARTER (costume designer, “Selma” and “Black Panther”) They were afraid of one drop of black blood.

REGINALD HUDLIN (film director and producer, 2016 Academy Awards ceremony) That kind of stuff is encouraging to me. If you don’t hear from those people, you’re not making a difference.

DENNIS RICE (member of the academy’s public relations branch) I think we have to create an environment that supports diversity within our industry, but I’m color- and gender-blind when it comes to recognizing our art. You should look purely and objectively at the artistic accomplishment.

BOONE ISAACS Are you kidding me? We all have biases. You just don’t see it if it doesn’t affect you.

HUDSON We needed to make sure the membership represented a wide swath of the community, and that it was looking at a wide swath of films.

LEONARD I think what happened with the academy forced conversations among decision makers across the industry. What are we doing here? Why are we making the decisions that we’re making? And oh, if we continue to make the decisions that we’re making, we will be called out about it.


This month, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California reported a 17 percent increase in 2019 in the number of top films with people of color in a lead role since the year #OscarsSoWhite began.

PETER RAMSEY (one of three directors of “Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse”) You could see the tide shifting a little from the same few recognizable, white stars to movies that were in tune with younger and more diverse sensibilities.

LEONARD All of this corresponds with a generation of filmmakers — Barry, Ryan [Coogler], Ava, Dee [Rees], Jordan [Peele] — who came up in the industry over the last 10, 15 years and knew that they had to be that much better to have the same chance that their white male peers would have.

RAMSEY The animation world has always been really homogeneous, but I’ve seen more and more people of color and women come to prominence. If you look at the slates of places like Pixar and Sony and Netflix, that stuff is translating to real change.

JENKINS It wasn’t about promoting diversity for diversity’s sake, it was about correcting a blind spot — the artists of merit have always been there.


On Feb. 28, 2016, the Oscar host Chris Rock delivered a litany of jokes about the academy’s lack of diversity on its own stage. But one bit, in which small Asian children portrayed “dedicated, accurate and hardworking” accountants, sparked outrage. A representative for Rock said he was unavailable to speak for this article.

REIGN I don’t think that went as well as they’d hoped.

LEONARD It was in poor taste. We can’t demand respect for a community that we’re in if we’re not willing to afford that same respect to other communities who have their own struggles.

HUDSON I don’t think Chris meant to offend, but it wasn’t in any way appropriate.

HUDLIN I trusted Chris to do what he does — I wasn’t there to supervise or manage him. But I was caught off-guard. The last thing I would ever want is to offend anyone. The only thing you can do is say that you’re sincerely sorry.


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The “Moonlight” team, including Barry Jenkins, front left, finally getting their best picture Oscar.Credit...Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

On Feb. 26, 2017, the night of the first Oscars of the A2020 era, more than 20 people of color were in contention, including seven in the acting categories and Jenkins for “Moonlight.” The winners included Jenkins (as a screenwriter) and Mahershala Ali, for “Moonlight,” and Viola Davis for “Fences.” After a stunning mishap in which the award was erroneously given to “La La Land,” “Moonlight” also won best picture.

REIGN 2017 felt different.

RAMSEY The door was widening.

JENKINS I don’t know if the numbers were shifting things, but I do think perspectives were broadening. #OscarsSoWhite had put the fact that so many people were being overlooked under a microscope. If “Moonlight” had come out three years earlier, I’m not sure how many people would have picked up that screener.

LEONARD On the one hand, maybe the new members changed the trajectory. But on the other hand, maybe, like “12 Years a Slave,” it was just that much better than everything else.

CARTER It didn’t feel like it was the black vote or the diversity vote, it felt like it was the right vote.


At the 2018 Oscars, four people of color were nominated in the acting categories. Peele, nominated three times for “Get Out,” won for original screenplay. In 2019, Ramsey, Carter and Lee were among a record-breaking seven African-American winners at a single ceremony.

RAMSEY It was 2019 when things seemed to really be maturing. The feeling I had was, “Oh, I think this is real.” It felt solid.

LEE The one thing I regret is that there’s not a picture of us all together holding our Oscars. Because it was bananas. It was crazy up in there.

JENKINS I was getting a glass of Champagne, and I looked up at the monitor and I think Hannah [Beachler, production designer for “Black Panther” and “Moonlight”] was onstage. I was like “Oh [expletive] — has anybody white won an Oscar yet?”

CARTER It felt amazing to be there with Spike and to be able to thank him from the stage for giving me my start [on “School Daze” in 1988]. Later, I was just a few rows back while he was getting his.

LEE If it were not for April Reign’s hashtag and Cheryl Boone Isaacs being president — the work of two sisters — I would not have an Oscar.

REIGN I don’t believe in having one good night and then declaring, “Everything is great.” The pendulum swings back and forth, as we’ve seen.

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John Cho and Issa Rae announcing this year’s nominations in January.Credit...A.M.P.A.S.

This year’s nominations include just one actor of color (Cynthia Erivo), and eight of the nine best picture nominees feature overwhelmingly white casts. (Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” is the exception.) Still, the academy is on track to reach its diversity targets by this summer, according to a spokeswoman. In total, it has grown by more than 3,000 new members since 2016, a nearly 50 percent increase.

CARTER The 2020 nominations are shameful. I love Scarlett Johansson [nominated for both “Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit”]. If she had played two very different characters in the same film the way that Lupita Nyong’o did in “Us,” might that have been deemed worthy of a nomination?

LEE After last year’s ceremony, I said, “It ain’t gonna be like this next year!” It’s always feast or famine with us.

DUVERNAY The majority of that voting body has not changed. It’s still 84 percent white and 68 percent male. From a voting perspective, even doubling the number of women and people of color doesn’t really tip the scales.

REIGN If you look at the demographics of this country or the demographics of moviegoers, we’re nowhere near true representation.

LEONARD You could have a year when literally every nominee is of color and that would still not mean that the systemic problems that exist in the industry have somehow evaporated overnight — any more than Obama being elected president means that we’ve solved the problem of racism.

REIGN We have to start way before the awards conversation. What kind of stories are getting greenlit? How are the characters described?

JENKINS I think we have to allow that the academy can have divergent tastes every year while still keeping the volume up and pointing things out. How can you have six Asian films that have received five or more nominations, and not one of them has ever been honored in the acting category? We just have to keep the conversation going and keep making movies.

LEE This thing’s not gonna turn around overnight. It’s been a battle from the beginning: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier. And why should we think that struggle is not a part of our existence?

BOONE ISAACS There’s always yin and yang, there’s always push and pull — always. But I am a big believer that you stay on point, you stay on goal, and you keep moving.

RAMSEY There’s too many other ways to get entertainment now than the tiny number of movies that get official academy recognition each year. #OscarsSoWhite is an alarm bell. It’s saying, “Keep up with us, or we’re going to leave you behind.”

Reggie Ugwu is a pop culture reporter covering a range of subjects, including film, television, music and internet culture. Before joining The Times in 2017, he was a reporter for BuzzFeed News and Billboard magazine. More about Reggie Ugwu

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section AR, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: #OscarsSoWhite Held Up An Unflattering Mirror. Hollywood Still Can’t Look Away.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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