If you thought Ava DuVernay wasn’t going to be nominated for an Oscar for Selma, congratulations, you’re in prestigious company: DuVernay herself knew she wasn’t likely to crack the top five in this year’s crowded directing category. “This is not me being humble,” the filmmaker told Entertainment Weekly in an interview that took place in December but was published this week. “It’s math.” The director’s branch of the Academy is 91 percent male and 90 percent white, and none of them run in DuVernay’s circle; as she told the magazine, “I know not one person in my branch.”
EW’s profile of DuVernay also contains numerous juicy tidbits from anonymous Academy members on why Selma may have been snubbed. Nearly all of them are passive-aggressive as hell! Here’s the worst, on why voters may have been turned off by DuVernay’s Oscar campaign, which was often linked to her efforts in the #BlackLivesMatter protests: “It’s almost like because she is African-American, we should have made her one of the nominees. I think that’s racist. Look at what we did last year with 12 Years.” As another member puts it, “The Academy loves to be liberal. But they like to be nice and comfortably liberal.”
