Meryl Streep, the most admired actress of her generation, fueled Hollywood’s diversity controversy on Thursday when she said that all of humanity originated in Africa.<\/p>\n
The three-time Oscar winner, who is in Berlin heading up her first international film jury, made the comment at a news conference when she was asked if she was familiar with world cinema, particularly films from Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
She said she had recently seen the Jordanian film “Theeb,” about a Bedouin boy on a hazardous mission in the desert, and also “Timbuktu,” about Islamist militants taking over the fabled Malian city.<\/p>\n
“The thing that I notice is that there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture,” she said. “And after all, we’re all from Africa originally, you know. We’re all Berliners; we’re all Africans, really.”<\/p>\n
The comments from Streep, who has been Oscar-nominated a record 19 times, made headlines around the world and swiftly became one of the top trends on Twitter.<\/p>\n
They followed an uproar over the all-white Oscar acting nominee selection for a second straight year, which forced the movie industry to confront how blacks, Asians and Latinos are represented in front of and behind the camera in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
Some commentators on Thursday expressed disappointment.<\/p>\n
“You\u2019d think Meryl Streep would be smarter than to say \u201cWe\u2019re all Africans, really\u201d in any context, but alas,” said @Jamil Smith.<\/p>\n
Others said Streep’s remarks were misinterpreted.<\/p>\n
“Watch the whole interview before jumping on Meryl Streep,” tweeted @evansArmour. “Her quote was taken out of context.”<\/p>\n
Black Magic Woman’s tweet included a poster of Streep’s 1985 “Out of Africa” film, where she plays a white land owner. “Now we know Meryl Streep was serious when she made this movie,” the tweet said.<\/p>\n
Streep’s U.S. representative did not return calls for comment or clarification.<\/p>\n
In Berlin, Streep said her seven-member, mainly female jury included a film critic and a photographer and that the panel would have diverse viewpoints.<\/p>\n
“We will be looking at different things in these films,” she said, “but we’re human beings, and film is an emotional experience so … we’re going to make these decisions based on what our heads want to say.<\/p>\n
“But we’re first attacked by the heart, so that’s an interesting process. I’m so looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meryl Streep, the most admired actress of her generation, fueled Hollywood’s diversity controversy on Thursday when she said that all of humanity originated in Africa. The three-time Oscar winner, who is in Berlin heading up her first international film jury, made the comment at a news conference when she was asked if she was familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18684,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18682\/revisions\/18684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}