Janet Hubert, who played Will Smith’s Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has slammed the actor and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith over their planned Oscars boycott.
Hubert blasted the couple via a Facebook video titled ‘To the Smiths!’ in response to Pinkett Smith who said she may boycott the Academy Awards due to the lack of black nominees,”
In the four-minute video, Hubert questions the couple’s motivation and Will Smith’s acting ability.
“First of all, miss thing,” the 60-year-old says, referring to Pinkett Smith, “does your man not have a mouth of his own with which to speak?”
“The second thing, girlfriend, there’s a lot of sh*t going on in the world that you all don’t seem to recognise. People are dying. Our boys are being shot left and right. People are starving. People are trying to pay bills. And you’re talking about some motherf**king actors and Oscars. It just ain’t that deep.”
Hubert went further and criticised Pinkett Smith for asking “other black actresses and actors” to “jeopardise their career” in Hollywood. She said she found it “ironic” they were planning to boycott the people who helped them make their living just because Smith didn’t receive a nomination.
She then recalled an incident that occurred during the Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air years, where Smith refused to negotiate his contract alongside the rest of the cast.
“Well, karma must be a b*tch, cause now here you are,” she said. “Here you are, you’ve had a few flops and you know there are those out there who really deserved a nod.”
Describing Idris Elba, who also missed out on a nomination for his role in Beasts of No Nation, as an “incredible actor”, Hubert didn’t have quite the same praise for Smith’s work.
“You are not,” she said. “Maybe you didn’t deserve a nomination. I didn’t think, frankly, you deserved a Golden Globes nomination with that accent, but you got one. And just because the world doesn’t go the way you want it to go, doesn’t mean you can go out and start asking people to stand up and sing We Shall Overcome for you.
“You ain’t Barack and Michelle Obama. And you all need to get over yourselves. You have a huge production company that you only produce your friends, your family, and yourself. So you are a part of Hollywood, you are a part of the system that is unfair to other actors, so get real!”
The feud between Hubert and Smith has been longstanding, with their creative differences leading to her being fired from the ’90s sitcom in 1993 and replaced with Daphne Reid.
Following the outcry over the all-white nominations, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs released a statement on Tuesday saying she is “heartbroken and frustrated” at the “lack of inclusion”.
In a statement, Boone Isaacs said it is a difficult but important conversation, and that it is time for a big change.
“The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership,” she said.
“In the coming days and weeks, we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”
Boone Isaacs added that “dramatic steps” were being taken, saying: “In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.”
The 6,300 members, made up of people from the film industry, vote on who is nominated for the Oscars each year.
“This is a difficult but important conversation, and it’s time for big changes,” she said.
“As many of you know, we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. but the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.”
She said such a move was not “unprecedented” for the Academy, and that in the 60s and 70s younger members were recruited and that today’s mandate was about inclusion: “gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation”.
Boone Isaacs has also tried to make the show on 28 February more diverse, bringing in black comedian Chris Rock to host.
This is the second year in a row there have been boycott calls, sparked by a list of nominees that is mostly white.
Chris Rock, who is expected to go ahead with his hosting duties, on Friday described the Oscar as “The White BET Awards”.
There was an immediate backlash on Twitter when the Oscar nominations were announced last week and Will Smith (Concussion), Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation), and Samuel L Jackson (The Hateful Eight) were noticeably snubbed.
The hashtag “OscarsSoWhite” was heavily used after Thursday’s announcement.
The Reverend Al Sharpton said: “Hollywood is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher up you get the whiter it gets and this year’s Academy Awards will be yet another Rocky Mountain Oscar.”
Filmmaker Spike Lee posted a message Monday saying he would not be attending the ceremony.
I don’t think I want to spend my life living in a colour…