“We, as black people, have been celebrated more for when we are subservient, when we are not being leaders or kings or being in the center of our own narrative driving it forward,” said the actor, who was surprisingly not nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Danny Moloshok / Reuters
When the Academy Awards were announced in January, the biggest snub-related uproar centered on Selma , director Ava DuVernay's film about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) and the 1965 voting rights marches in Alabama, from Selma to Montgomery.
In the weeks since the Oscar nominations, Oyelowo has addressed the fact that the Academy didn't acknowledge him or DuVernay with a nomination, either putting a positive spin on it by discussing Selma's Best Picture nomination and another for "Glory" in the Best Original Song category, or by admitting he is "bothered" by it, largely because he wanted Dr. King to "be celebrated." But during a panel discussion with The Hollywood Reporter 's Scott Feinberg on Sunday at the 2015 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Oyelowo said the snub actually speaks to a larger issue in Hollywood, specifically with the Academy voters.
"Historically — this is truly my feeling; I felt this before the situation we're talking about and I feel it now — generally speaking, we, as black people, have been celebrated more for when we are subservient, when we are not being leaders or kings or being in the center of our own narrative driving it forward," the actor said. Oyelowo went on to point out to the audience that Denzel Washington didn't win an Oscar for playing Malcolm X, and though many would have thought Sidney Poitier won an Academy Award for his performance in In the Heat of the Night, he didn't even earn a nomination. Instead, he was honored by the Academy for his portrayal of a handyman in Lilies of the Field.
"This bears out what I'm saying, which is that we've just got to come to the point whereby there isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy — a notion of who black people are — that feeds into what we are celebrated as, not just in the Academy, just in life generally," Oyelowo said. "We have been slaves, we have been domestic servants, we have been criminals, we have been all of those things. But we've been leaders, we've been kings, we've been those who changed the world."
Warner Brothers / Everett Collection
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