Courtside over red carpet! Spike Lee opened up once again about the recent controversy surrounding the 2016 Oscars during an appearance on Good Morning America on Wednesday, January 20.
As previously reported, the Chi-Raq director, 58, announced on Martin Luther King Day that he will not be attending the star-studded event next month because, like last year, African-Americans — or any other minorities — are not nominated in any of the major categories. During GMA, however, he cleared up the fact that he never actually used the word “boycott” in his Instagram post.
“All I said was my beautiful wife, Tonya, we’re not coming. That’s it, and I gave the reasons. I never used the word boycott,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “It’s like — do you. I’m not going. My wife’s not going. Everyone else can do what they want to do.”
“[That day], we’ll be at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden,” the filmmaker added. “I’m going to a Knicks game.” (Jada Pinkett Smith said that she will be boycotting the show.)
Like Whoopi Goldberg before, Lee blames the lack of diversity on Hollywood heavy hitters who are behind the scenes. “It goes further than the Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gatekeepers. The people who have the green-light vote,” he explained. “We’re not in the room [with] the executives when they have these green-light meetings quarterly where they look at the scripts. They look who’s in it and they decide what we’re making and what we’re not making.”
Lee suggested a solution to the problem, however. The celebrated director thinks that Hollywood should start a program like the NFL, where teams are obligated to interview minority candidates as well. “That has increased the number of minority coaches and executives in the NFL and that should be used because we can’t go to that old tired realm,” he said.
Lee, who received an honorary Oscar last November, also opened up about his Oscar-nominated drama Do the Right Thing on Wednesday. The drama lost to Driving Miss Daisy in the Best Writing category in 1990.
“[The movie is] being taught in colleges, schools,” he said. “No one is watching Driving Miss Daisy now. So it also shows you that the work is what’s important because that’s what’s going to stand for years, not an award.”
Watch the video above.
