Chuck D, Kendrick Lamar, Questlove Invited To Join Oscars’ Academy
Other new members from the music world include Prince & The Revolution’s Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, Sufjan Stevens and German pianist Hauschka.
Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Kendrick Lamar, The Roots’ Questlove and Melissa Etheridge are among the record-setting 928 members who have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that oversees the Oscars.
Other new members from the music world include Prince & The Revolution’s Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, Sufjan Stevens, German pianist Hauschka, French composer Eric Serra and singer Ester Dean.
Of the 928 new members, 49 percent are women, pushing the Academy’s total female membership to 31 percent. Thirty-eight percent of the new members are people of color, improving the Academy’s overall percentage to 16 percent.
The push to add more women and people of color to the Oscars Academy continues former president Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ goal to diversify the Academy by 2020. In 2014, the lack of people of color in the major Oscar categories sparked the #OscarsSoWhite campaign; in 2016, it was revealed that the Academy was 92 percent white and 75 percent male. If the 2018 invitees accept then the overall membership would be 9,226.
Actors (including Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya, Black Panther’s Danai Gurira, Game of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke and Jada Pinkett Smith, who boycotted the Oscars in 2016 over their lack of diversity), comedians (Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman, Tiffany Haddish and Hannibal Buress), directors (Call Me By Your Name’s Luca Guadagnino, Michel Gondry, Bela Tarr, It’s Andy Muschietti and The Rider’s Chloe Zhao) and more were also invited to join the Academy.
Angela Robinson (Professor Marston and the Wonder Women), Justin Simien (Dear White People) and Sean Baker (The Florida Project) are among the directors invited to join the Academy. International filmmakers include Luca Guadagnino, Andy Muschietti, Chloe Zhao, Nadine Labaki, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Ziad Doueiri, and Michel Gondry.
Producers include J. Miles Dale, who won the Best Picture Oscar in March with Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water, Get Out producer Sean McKittrick and Nichole Rocklin, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Spotlight. Writers tapped include J.K. Rowling, Emily V. Gordon, Jonathan Nolan, Joe Robert Cole and Virgil Williams.
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