Tyrese Gibson has added his voice to the many criticizing the lack of diversity for this year's Academy Award nominations by asking Chris Rock to step down as host of the 2016 Oscars.
“There is no joke that he can crack. There is no way for him to seize the moment and come into this thing and say, ‘I’m going to say this and say that I’m going to address the issue but then I’m still going to keep my gig as the host,’” Gibson told People. “The statement that you make is that you step down.”
Tyrese Gibson Takes On The 2016 Oscars To Protest #OscarsSoWhite
Gibson, alongside Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith, and thousands of people uniting around the hashtag # OscarsSoWhite are reacting to the second year in a row in which no actors of color were nominated for an Oscar, despite a bevy of movies with diverse casts and worthy nominees.
Gibson reemphasized the point on Instagram , once again calling for Rock to “do the right thing”:
Gibson followed up his post calling for Chris Rock to join the Oscars boycott with a video of real-world diversity, presented as evidence for his assertion that the Academy Awards have failed to reflect America’s multiracial reality with their slate of nominees:
“This is not us saying we’re against the Oscars,” Entertainment Weekly quotes Gibson as saying. “We’re just saying, ‘This is not cool.’ You can’t be doing this in 2016 and acting as if no one is going to notice.”